Raijor Dal's Akhil Gogoi and Congress's Gaurav Gogoi. The Congress is reportedly upset with Raijor Dal for welcoming several former Congress leaders who recently staged a controversial and public exit from the party.
Defector drama pushes Congress-Raijor Dal alliance to the brink before Assam polls
While Congress-led ASOM aims to present a unified wall against BJP, the foundation, however, is cracking over a "trust deficit" with Akhil Gogoi’s Raijor Dal
With just a month to go, the political temperature has started rising for the 2026 Assam Assembly elections.
The Congress-led United Opposition Forum—popularly known as the Asom Sonmilito Morcha (ASOM)—is attempting to stitch together a formidable anti-BJP coalition. However, differences over seat-sharing and trust deficits with the Akhil Gogoi-led Raijor Dal have left the alliance talks hanging in the balance.
At the heart of the negotiations is a simple but decisive question: can the Congress build a winning anti-BJP front without Raijor Dal? A total of eight Opposition parties have now officially formed a united front.
This group includes some big names like the Indian National Congress, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP), and the Communist Party of India, as well as the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation and the All Party Hill Leaders Conference (APHLC), along with a few others.
Trust issues
This big group is getting ready to take on the BJP and its allies in the NDA in the elections, and is trying to be the main opponent. Talks about sharing seats have come a long way. It seems the AJP will run for 12 seats, which include constituencies such as Khowang, Sadiya, Sarupather, Mahmora, and Guwahati Central. The CPI(M) is set to contest Rangia and Sarbhog, while the CPI will fight from Demow.
The CPI(ML) will run from Behali, and the APHLC will field candidates in Diphu and Rongkhang (ST).
A Congress top leader stated that they have already finalised plans with the parties they are working with. He also mentioned that they have almost reached an agreement with the AJP. The big question mark is whether Raijor Dal will be part of it. And, the main reason for this uncertainty isn't about their beliefs, but rather about trust issues.
The Congress is reportedly upset with Raijor Dal for welcoming several former Congress leaders who recently staged a controversial and public exit from the party. One of them is Sherman Ali Ahmed, a Congress MLA who was suspended and then joined Raijor Dal on February 17.
Soon after, he was made vice-president, and is now all set to stand from Mandia. Ahmed got in trouble with Congress and he got suspended on October 4, 2021 for not following party rules. He had made some comments about the 1983 Nellie massacre and Assam Agitation that didn't sit well with everyone. Recently, he made a public remark that upset Congress workers. He took a dig at the president of the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee, asking, "Who is Gaurav Gogoi?"
This didn't go down too well, and Congress is now even more upset with him. Gaurav Gogoi openly expressed his concerns, saying that by welcoming suspended leaders and possibly giving them tickets, trust has been damaged. He suggested that such actions make it appear that Raijor Dal is taking advantage of unhappy Congress leaders, rather than being a reliable partner.
Questions are being raised about Raijor Dal's intentions and whether it is truly committed or just trying to gain power by recruiting disgruntled members from other parties.
A new tension
A new point of tension is Abdur Rashid Mandal, who was a member of the legislative assembly three times from West Goalpara. He quit Congress earlier this month and joined Raijor Dal. Some Congress leaders say they might agree to have Mandal as a joint candidate from Goalpara East, but they are strongly against fielding Sherman Ali Ahmed as a candidate.
Locally, Congress members have taken to the streets to protest against the possibility of giving up certain seats, like Dalgaon. They're worried that this could weaken the party's hold on areas where they've been traditionally strong, and they feel they haven't been properly consulted. In fact, some Congress workers have even gone so far as to say that if the party gives up this seat to Raijor Dal, they'll leave and join the AIUDF instead.
Raijor Dal vs Congress
Akhil Gogoi, MLA for Sibsagar (Sivasagar) and Raijor Dal president spoke to the media in Guwahati on March 2.
Gogoi said the situation with the Congress alliance has become worse, and it's possible that they won't be able to work together after all. The main problem is that they can't agree on how to divide the seats. Initially, Gogoi wanted a lot more seats, like 27, but then lowered the number to 22, and finally settled down to 15 seats.
However, Congress was only willing to give 4 seats to Raijor Dal to contest directly, and they also offered some extra options, like friendly contests or other arrangements, which would add up to around 13 seats. This was a big difference from what Gogoi had initially asked for, and it's not clear if this compromise will work out for his party.
Raijor Dal's working president, Bhasco de Saikia, stated that the party was in favour of forming an alliance, but they found the proposal put forth by Congress to be unsatisfactory. According to him, if Congress were to concede just one more seat, bringing the total to five, a deal could potentially be reached, although he did not specify which particular constituency he was referring to.
On February 26, Jogendra Yadav and advocate Shantanu Borthakur had a meeting with Akhil Gogoi. In this meeting Gogoi asked for a total of five seats. However, after that, there was no response from Congress, even though Jogendra Yadav claimed that the talks about forming an alliance were still ongoing, according to Saikia.
"We were stuck about what to do about the alliance, so we asked the public for their opinion," he said.
Progressive option
Raijor Dal was created as a regional party that opposes the BJP and the CAA. It emerged out of the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti movement. The party sees itself as a progressive option.
In the 2021 Assembly elections, Raijor Dal didn't join the Congress-led Grand Alliance, which had 18 parties. Instead, its candidates ran as independents in 29 seats because the party registered late. Only one candidate won - Akhil Gogoi from Sibsagar. The party got around 1-1.5 per cent of the total votes in the state.
After the election, people looked at the results and thought that maybe Raijor Dal and AJP took votes away from each other in some areas of Upper Assam. This could have helped the BJP win in around 10 to 14 seats, even if it wasn't a direct result. Raijor Dal maintained that it was ideologically opposed to the BJP and cannot be blamed for vote division.
Alternative to BJP
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma doesn't think the Opposition can do much to stop him. Just a few days ago, he said that Akhil Gogoi won't be able to form a government in Assam, no matter how hard he tries, not even in 500 years.
He also mocked the talks between the Congress and the Raijor Dal, saying they're just trying to work together for their own benefit. In the 2021 Assembly elections, BJP-led NDA secured 75 seats with a 44 per cent vote share—BJP alone won 60 seats (33.21 per cent), AGP nine (7.78 per cent) and UPPL six (3.4 per cent).
The election results showed that the Congress-led Grand Alliance came out on top, winning a total of 50 seats with a combined vote share of 42 per cent. If we break it down, we can see that Congress itself secured 29 seats, which is about 29.67 per cent of the total.
The AIUDF got 16 seats with a 9.4 per cent vote share, and the BPF managed to get four seats with 3.39 per cent of the votes. On the other hand, the AJP didn't win any seats, despite getting 3.66 per cent of the vote share. The Raijor Dal, however, won one seat with 1.5 per cent of the votes.
Can Opposition parties put aside their differences and work together to give people a real choice besides the BJP? As Assam moves closer to the 2026 polls, the coming days may determine whether the anti-BJP forces march united—or fight divided once again.
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