The Assam unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has launched a sharp attack on the Congress ahead of the April 9 Assembly election, accusing successive Congress governments of failing to protect the state's linguistic, cultural, and demographic integrity.
Speaking at a press conference, BJP spokesperson Kishor Kumar Bhattacharya drew a distinction between early post-independence Congress leaders and those who followed them.
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Bhattacharya acknowledged that early Congress figures — Gopinath Bordoloi, Bishnuram Medhi, and Bimala Prasad Chaliha — had stood firm on Assamese nationalism and at times pushed back against the central leadership to protect regional identity.
However, he alleged that later Congress governments shifted their political approach, growing dependent on specific voter groups for electoral support — a shift he claimed created long-term demographic and political consequences for the state.
Bhattacharya connected these developments to events surrounding the death of Mangaldoi Lok Sabha MP Hiralal Patowary. He claimed that irregularities in electoral rolls during the subsequent by-election triggered widespread public unrest, which eventually culminated in the historic Assam Movement of 1979 — led by the All Assam Students' Union (AASU) — demanding the identification and expulsion of illegal foreigners.
While the Assam Accord of 1985 formally ended the agitation, Bhattacharya alleged that successive governments failed to fully implement its spirit or address the underlying concerns of indigenous communities.
The BJP spokesperson further alleged that encroachment on religious and forest lands continued for years under Congress rule, along with the inclusion of suspected foreign nationals in electoral rolls.
He claimed large tracts of land had been occupied over time — but argued the situation began to reverse after the BJP came to power in Assam in 2016.
As a key example, he highlighted that around 1,200 bighas of land at Batadrava Than — the birthplace of Vaishnavite saint Srimanta Sankardev — had been cleared of encroachment and developed into a cultural heritage site.
According to Bhattacharya, the current government has reclaimed nearly 1.5 lakh bighas of encroached land since 2016. He added that if returned to power, the BJP has set a target of recovering an additional 5 lakh bighas over the next five years.
On the cultural front, he also pointed to the NDA government's decision to grant classical language status to Assamese, calling it a significant milestone for the state's linguistic identity.
Bhattacharya closed his address with a political charge — alleging that recent government actions have unsettled sections traditionally aligned with the Congress, prompting what he described as efforts to destabilise the BJP-led administration in the run-up to the election.
The Congress party has not yet formally responded to the allegations.