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Business News/ Politics / Policy/  What’s next for Tarun Gogoi after election results go BJP’s way in Assam?
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What’s next for Tarun Gogoi after election results go BJP’s way in Assam?

Analysts feel a loss at this stage could leave little scope of political rehabilitation for Assam's chief minister Tarun Gogoi

When the exit poll predictions came out on Monday, Tarun Gogoi still held ground and told television channels that he was confident that the Congress party would pull off a win in its old, key north-east bastion. Photo: PTIPremium
When the exit poll predictions came out on Monday, Tarun Gogoi still held ground and told television channels that he was confident that the Congress party would pull off a win in its old, key north-east bastion. Photo: PTI

New Delhi: All the states that went to polls in the past month had a common factor: anti-incumbency, with all the states known for their incumbent chief ministers battling the pressure of being in power. But if there is one leader that faced the maximum political fatigue, it was Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi.

Being in power for three consecutive terms, 81-year-old Gogoi has seen several ups and downs in his political career. But when the exit poll predictions came out on Monday, he still held ground and told television channels that he was confident that the Congress party would pull off a win in its old, key north-east bastion.

However, early predictions of counting on Thursday made it clear that Gogoi was no longer in the reckoning. The chief minister who had surprised many by winning a third consecutive term in 2006 could no longer inspire a win in a state that has a little under a third of the total electorate under 30 years of age and about two-thirds under 50.

The big question that remains, however, is: what’s next for Gogoi?

For a man who has headed the Congress party in the state for 15 years, served as a parliamentarian and as a Union minister, a loss at this stage, analysts feel, could leave little scope of political rehabilitation.

“It may be too early to write the epitaph of the Congress party in Assam but it seems like it is the end of Gogoi’s political career. It’s not even about his age, the fact is he could enthuse the people in his first and second terms, he was ‘the’ leader of Assam but he lost everything in his third term. He could no longer motivate people, enthuse them or give them hope," said Nani Gopal Mahanta, head of the political science department at Gauhati University.

Senior leaders of the party feel that if Gogoi and the top leadership of the party had gone ahead with a change of face in the election, they could have looked at a change of script, or at least staged a more impassioned fight, apart from avoiding the Himanta Biswa Sarma episode, where the influential leader had left the party to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the run-up to the polls.

“We were fighting against too many odds. Gogoi still had a very strong chance if he had been more accommodative of the next generation. Even the central leaders were living in denial for too long that the BJP and its allies could not throw up a surprise in Assam. We have lost state after state since 2014 but Assam will be the most glaring one," a senior Congress leader said, requesting anonymity.

Gogoi took over as the chief minister of the state in 2001 from the Asom Gana Parishad, now an ally in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Born in Upper Assam’s Jorhat district, Gogoi’s entry in politics was from Jagannath Barooah (JB) College in Jorhat. Gogoi joined the Congress party in 1963 and is known to be close to party president Sonia Gandhi. His son Gaurav Gogoi is one of the youngest Congress members in Lok Sabha.

A loss in this election would be remembered as one of his biggest political losses.

“The biggest failure of Tarun Gogoi is that he has failed to bring up a second rung of leadership to replace him. The best option for him was to hand over the mantle to Sarma but he didn’t, and now Sarma is his biggest challenger. In his third term, he left governance to bureaucracy and his failure lies in his inability to innovate, govern and impart hope to people," Mahanta added.

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Published: 19 May 2016, 11:05 AM IST
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