As reported by the media the Assam Health Minister and BJP Senior leader, Himanta Biswa Sarma candidly stated in the run up to the Assam Assembly polls to be held later this year, that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would not get any seats in areas dominated by Miya Muslims, as they do not vote for the BJP.

‘Miya Muslim’ is an informal term used to refer to Bengali Muslims in Assam.

Sarma noted that Miya Muslims did not vote for the BJP in Panchayat and the 2014 Lok Sabha elections as they identify with their Islamic identity rather than their pan Indian identity as Indian nationals.

Sarma is reported to have said on Saturday that “Miya Muslims don’t vote for us (BJP), I am saying this on the basis of experience. They didn’t vote for us in Panchayat and 2014 Lok Sabha polls. BJP will not get votes in the seats that are in their (Miya Muslims) hands, while other seats are ours.”

He further clarified by saying that, “We will field our candidates in those (Miya Muslims) seats so that people who do not identify themselves with ‘Miya Muslims’ get an option to vote for lotus (BJP’s symbol) or elephant (Asom Gana Parishad’s symbol).”

The Assembly polls for the State of Assam is likely to be conducted in April-May this year for the 126 Assembly seats.

Notably, Himanta Biswa Sarma was a senior leader of the Congress and migrated to BJP as Congress President Rahul Gandhi was more interested in feeding his pet dog Pidi rather than listen Sarma’s feed back on the growing problem of demographic change in Assam due to unabated illegal infiltration of Bangladeshi Muslims and a need for getting the NRC exercise to be done in Assam to identify the illegal immigrants and deport them from India.

Himanta Biswa Sarma under his able leadership and candid no-nonsense approach in calling out jihadi fundamentalism in Assam has single handedly turned the tide of politics in favour of the Saffron Party in Assam and in the North-East in general.

Under the leadership of Sarma, the BJP government in Assam recently passed a Bill to stop funding religious schools in Assam, majority of which went towards funding Madrasas, Islamic religious schools.

Sarma said that these Madrasas running on government aid would be converted to normal schools under the state education board and will teach secular subjects like, maths, science, social science etc. instead of Islamic religious texts.

This move of the Assam government mooted by Sarma was lauded by all nationalists and constitutionalists as state funding to religious studies is in violation of the basic structure of the Constitution, which envisages a secular state.

It is only natural that Congress under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi, being jihadi friendly party did not heed to the sane advice of Sarma which would have saved the party from being wiped out in Assam.

News source: The Commune Magazine dated, 01.02.2021. Image sourced from Swarajya

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