Gaurav Gogoi came to Jorhat carrying his father’s legacy, his party’s hopes and the title of chief ministerial candidate. He left having lost by more than 23,000 votes to BJP incumbent Hitendra Nath Goswami, and with the Congress headed for its third consecutive defeat in Assam. The result is a personal blow as much as a political one. The 43-year-old three-time MP and Deputy Leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha had staked his state-level debut on Jorhat, a seat his opponent has contested in every assembly election since 1991.
The Congress Collapse
The broader picture for the Congress is equally grim. The party currently leads in just 24 of Assam’s 126 seats, scattered across Central and Lower Assam and parts of the Barak Valley. In Upper and North Assam, home to several ethnic Assamese communities across 43 seats, the Congress is leading in only one constituency, Nowboicha.
The BJP-led NDA, meanwhile, is racing towards its biggest-ever win in the state, currently leading in 99 seats and well on course for a hat-trick under Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.
Gogoi’s Difficult Campaign
Gogoi’s challenge was always steep. His father, Tarun Gogoi, remains Assam’s longest-serving chief minister, and Gaurav leaned heavily on that legacy throughout the campaign. But with responsibilities as APCC president pulling him across the state to campaign for candidates in other constituencies, much of his own canvassing in Jorhat was left to local party workers.
His opponent had no such problem. Goswami has been a fixture in Jorhat politics for over three decades, winning from the seat as an Asom Gana Parishad MLA between 1991 and 2006 before joining the BJP in 2014 and winning every election since.
In 2024, Gogoi had won the Jorhat Lok Sabha seat in a fierce contest against the BJP, one of the party’s more significant individual victories that year. That win now looks like an outlier rather than a trend.
The Numbers
Assam recorded a historic voter turnout of 85.91 per cent in the April 9 elections, with female turnout reaching an all-time high of 86.5 per cent. The Axis My India exit poll had predicted the BJP-led NDA would win between 88 and 100 seats, with the Congress-led alliance reduced to 24 to 36. The counting so far suggests those projections were, if anything, conservative.
