HOJAI: For Assam's biggest minority face, Maulana Badruddin Ajmal, the April 9 electoral contest begins from his Gopal Nagar home in central Assam's Hojai town.
Gopal Nagar is located on the southern edge of Binnakandi Assembly constituency, from where Ajmal, a former MP and president of minority-based party All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), is contesting. Ask anyone in Hojai, and they will guide you to any of the various educational institutions or the Haji Abdul Majid Memorial (HAMM) Hospital and Research Centre that the Ajmal Foundation runs in the "perfume town".
Locals know the AIUDF chief as "Ajmal Seth", who is a perfume baron with business interests spread across India and the Gulf. Despite his significant reach in Assam’s “Miya” areas, the AIUDF is facing the toughest battle this election. Miya is a pejorative term for Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam.
The AIUDF was floated in 2005 as United Democratic Front (UDF) after the Supreme Court had struck down the controversial Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act the same year. The Act was construed as pro-immigrant. Its repeal created a sense of insecurity among the Bengali-speaking Muslims, who felt neglected and exploited by the then ruling Congress that they had always supported.
It was in this backdrop that Ajmal founded the UDF as a protective political platform and renamed it as AIUDF in 2009. For nearly two decades, the AIUDF remained a force to be reckoned with in the Bengali Muslim constituencies, bagging 10 seats in the 2006 Assembly polls, 18 in 2011, 13 in 2016 and 16 in 2021. It had contested the 2021 elections in alliance with the Congress.
When it comes to general elections, the outfit's performance was not very impressive. It had won one seat in the 2009 Parliamentary elections, three in 2014 and one in 2019. In 2024, it drew a blank with Ajmal himself losing to the Congress' Rakibul Hussain by a margin of more than 10 lakh votes in the Dhubri seat.
The constituency straddles vast swathes of Muslim-majority areas of Lower Assam. Ajmal's drubbing signalled the AIUDF's depleting popularity and the Congress began to work overtime in minority areas to regain the lost ground.
Soon after, the Akhil Gogoi-led regional party Raijor Dal set its sights on the minority constituencies. Gogoi stood by the Bengali Muslims when hundreds of them were evicted from the forest and government lands.
After the Lok Sabha poll debacle, the AIUDF was faced with dissent. Recently, the party suspended two MLAs for six years for alleged anti-party activities. Two other MLAs ditched the party.
Of the four, three are contesting the polls – two as Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) candidates and one as National People's Party candidate.
The odds are against the AIUDF but Ajmal is confident. “We hope that we will win 25 seats,” he said. The AIUDF is contesting 30 seats, spread across Central Assam, Lower Assam and Barak Valley.
Attacking the Congress, which is likely to be the AIUDF's biggest adversary in the polls, Ajmal said the Congress was in power for 70 years, yet it deprived Muslims of education.
BJP ally AGP is contesting 26 seats, 13 of them in minority areas. The candidates in these 13 seats are from the Bengali Muslim community. Similarly, four of the 13 seats the Raijor Dal is contesting are in minority areas.
Ajmal slammed critics for calling the AIUDF a Muslim party. He said when he spoke about his community, he was labelled communal, but when others spoke about theirs, they were not.
"I am not communal. 33 per cent of students in my various educational institutions are non-Muslims. Again, my HAMM hospital accounts for more than 33 per cent non-Muslim doctors and employees," Ajmal said.
He said the AIUDF earlier had three to four Hindu MLAs and a Hindu MP. “That’s why, the AIUDF cannot be labelled as a Muslim party,” he claimed.