Five-time Congress MLA Rakibul Hussain, who is now Lok Sabha MP, accuses BJP of winning Muslim-majority Samaguri by offering beef to Bengali Muslims. The statement has left many leaders in both the BJP and the Congress stunned.
Hussain had won the seat in the 2021 Assembly elections. The BJP and its allies swept all the five Assembly seats in the recent bypolls in Assam, with the most significant being Samaguri.
The bypoll was necessitated by Hussain’s election to the Lok Sabha. His 26-year-old son Tanzil, nominated by the Congress for the Samaguri bypoll, lost to the BJP’s Diplu Ranjan Sarmah.
A Hindu devotee offers food to a cow in Punjab state (2021 photo from AFP/social media)
Over the weekend, visiting different areas in North and Upper Assam, Hussain alleged that Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and the BJP had “betrayed” the Hindutva they claim to espouse by “offering beef” and “pursuing Bengali Muslim voters”.
Speaking in the presence of Assam Congress chief Bhupen Borah in Lakhimpur’s Ranganadi, he said this was also a betrayal of the “ethnic Assamese communities” which populate North and Upper Assam, and called Sarma “two-faced”.
Targeting Bengali Muslims as “outsiders” is one of the central planks of the BJP’s politics in Assam.
For his part, the Assam Chief Minister responded by stating that his government was willing to introduce a beef ban in the state if the Congress “asks for it”.
“I want to tell Rakibul Hussain that beef should be banned, as he himself said it is wrong… So, I will write to Bhupen Borah and ask him if he also advocates banning beef in line with Rakibul Hussain, and just inform me. I will ban beef completely in the next Assembly (session itself).
Then the BJP, AGP, CPI(M), nobody will be able to offer… Hindus, Muslims and Christians, all should stop eating beef, and all problems will be solved,” the CM said.
At the gathering in Ranganadi, Hussain said: “The Himanta Biswa Sarma that you, the people of North Assam and Upper Assam, recognise and understand has a very different face in Lower Assam… He says he does not want ‘miya (a pejorative term for Bengali-Muslims) votes’,
....but you will not believe that just to win, he killed a cow and gave a feast.”
In the 2021 Assembly elections, the Congress had lost a lot of ground in this region, winning only five seats in Upper Assam and North Assam. Most of its wins were in Central and Lower Assam, and a few in the Barak Valley.
The assembly elections are due in Assam by April-May 2026 -- less than two years.
A senior Congress leader admitted that Hussain's line on beef with the unusual twist should have been avoided by the party, and that the Samaguri loss does not reflect a significant change in voter behaviour in the state.
“This strategy will not benefit the Congress, but only the BJP either way. It is Hussain saving face because the outcome was a mandate against him ...We should fight on our own strengths.
The outcome does not show a loss of support among minority voters, and so why should the party antagonize them?," the Congress leader stated.
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