In a social media post Tuesday evening, BJP’s Khumtai MLA Mrinal Saika called Gogoi’s win “amazing” and “significant” and wrote: “The outcome proved that money, big publicity, overdoses of leaders and arrogant speeches do not always help to win elections. “

This invited Sarma’s ire, and he suggested that Saikia would soon leave the BJP for the Congress.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Saikia, a BJP veteran who has been part of the party for nearly three decades, said he has no plans to leave the party. He also elaborated on his comments from the previous day, saying a “personalised campaign” in Jorhat had hurt the BJP. “It was a fight between the CM and Gaurav Gogoi,” he said.

“It is not dissent; it is my opinion… Our party’s campaign in Jorhat was not good. I would call it over-campaigning and it resulted in a sympathy wave for Gogoi. If you abuse a person from day to night, it doesn’t work,” he said.

A day after his win, Gogoi told The Indian Express, “I feel as if the Chief Minister made it a prestige issue for him because in his campaign, he would never mention the name of the local candidate. In fact, in many of his big rallies, the candidate was not even seen with him. The candidate would be in some remote corner addressing some remote rally and it was the Chief Minister who himself took charge of major rallies and major cycle yatras and padyatras.”

“I don’t know why he felt the need to take this approach but clearly, he could not read the pulse of the people of Jorhat. In hindsight, I can say that the more that the Chief Minister campaigned in Jorhat, the more it benefited my campaign. The more the Chief Minister and his Cabinet colleagues would come and spread their vicious propaganda, the more it benefited. So in the end, the Chief Minister became a surprise star campaigner for me,” he said.

There are multiple reasons that made the Upper Assam seat the biggest prestige battle in the state. It was new territory for Gogoi, who has over the years emerged as a prominent Parliamentarian from the Northeast and was the Deputy Leader of the Congress in the last Lok Sabha. The Kaliabor seat, which he represented for the past 10 years, and which had been represented by his father Tarun Gogoi and uncle Dip Gogoi for the preceding two decades, was redrawn, transformed and renamed to Kaziranga in last year’s Delimitation of Parliamentary and Assembly constituencies. There had been uncertainty over which seat he would contest from, until Jorhat was settled upon.

It was a two-way contest between him and another Gogoi, Tapan, the incumbent BJP MP from the seat and a former MLA from Sonari, one of the Assembly segments there. However, while Gaurav Gogoi was the face of his own campaign, which was largely carried out through multiple small-scale meetings in different parts of the constituency, the face of the BJP campaign was Chief Minister Sarma.

Sarma made it a point to start his campaign trail from the river island Majuli, which is a part of Jorhat constituency. He held multiple massive roadshows and rallies in different parts of the seat, and several of his MLAs and ministers camped in Jorhat for long periods of time during the campaign.

In a widely circulated video, Sarma could be heard saying during the campaign that the Congress would suffer its biggest margin of loss in this seat. There is also a personal rivalry between Sarma and Gogoi: the former was a key Tarun Gogoi confidante, but they had a falling out after Tarun initiated his son into politics and started promoting him in the Congress. This, many say, paved the way for Sarma’s switch to the BJP.

Despite the aggressive campaign by the BJP in the seat, the Congress won by a margin of 1.4 lakh votes. While the Election Commission is yet to provide an assembly segment-wise distribution of votes, Congress leaders said their calculations show the party led in all 10 assembly segments except Majuli.

“It is a defeat of the Assam government and the Chief Minister. The whole Cabinet was there, MLAs were there. They poached Congress office-bearers there. They took the working president, general secretary,” said Assam Congress spokesperson Mehdi Alam Bora.

In a post online on Wednesday, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh wrote, “Not only is the PM outgoing, but with my young colleague Gaurav Gogoi’s impressive 1 lakh+ lead in Jorhat, the countdown for the exit of the Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma has also begun. .”

The loss in Jorhat also hurts the BJP for other reasons. Party leaders in Assam, led by Sarma, have often said the Congress has been reduced to receiving votes only from Muslims in the state. However, the Jorhat seat is the Ahom heartland, where the Ahom community makes up the largest chunk of voters, followed by the tea garden communities, and caste Assamese and Mising tribal voters.

Assam BJP chief Bhabesh Kalita, while talking about the outcome, said Jorhat was the exception, and that apart from Jorhat, “the Congress has only taken leads in minority-dominated areas”.

“We lost in nine segments there… We will have discussions and introspect on what went wrong in the seat, where we gained, where we lost… In time, we will consider the disciplinary measures against Saikia,” he said.

Overall, there is a status quo in the seat distribution in the state. In 2019, the BJP had 10 seats, the Congress three and an Independent had won one seat. This time, the BJP had contested in 11 seats, leaving three to its regional allies: two to the Asom Gana Parishad and one for the United People’s Party Liberal, while the Congress had contested 13, leaving the Dibrugarh seat to its regional ally, Assam. Jatiya Parishad.

In the end, the BJP won nine, its allies won two, and the Congress won three. However, the overall vote share presents an interesting picture. The Congress received a 37.48% vote share in the state, while the BJP has a 37.43% vote share. The vote share has increased for both the parties compared to 2019: from 35.79% for the Congress and for 36.41% for the BJP.