Why an ‘inclusive’ tribal leader from Assam has joined hands with BJP for the Assembly poll

In April 2021, while campaigning for the Assembly elections, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Himanta Biswa Sarma threatened to throw Hagrama Mohilary, the leader of Bodoland People’s Front, into jail and initiate proceedings against him by the National Investigation Agency.

The Election Commission barred Sarma from campaigning and speaking to the media for 48 hours.

At the time, Mohilary’s BPF was a part of a strong Opposition coalition against the incumbent BJP government, that included the Congress and the All India United Democratic Front led by Badruddin Ajmal. The Bodoland People’s Front was the only tribal-centric party of any substantial influence to stand up to the BJP in that election.

Cut to 2026: Sarma, now Assam Chief Minister, recently announced an alliance with Mohilary’s BPF to fight the upcoming elections in the Bodoland region.

Mohilary is one of the tallest tribal leaders in Assam, who has held his own despite the dominance of the BJP – and who has also set himself ideologically apart from Hindutva. “Hagrama has come to be seen by the wider public in Assam as a model regionalist leader who can stand his ground and speak up for his region,” said Mridugunjan Deka, a senior research fellow of political science at Gauhati University.

So what led Mohilary to bury his differences with Sarma? “You can call it a compromise,” Prabeen Baro, a Bodoland People’s Front leader and an aide of Mohilary, told Scroll. “But Sixth Schedule councils have to maintain a good relationship with the state government.”

Mohilary is head of the Bodoland Territorial Council, an autonomous government formed under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, that carves out special powers for tribal areas.

The Bodos are the largest tribal group in Assam, accounting for almost 6% of the state’s population. For decades, they demanded a separate state, arguing they had a distinct linguistic and cultural identity from the Assamese. In the 1980s, the demand took the shape of an insurgency as many groups took up arms. By the mid-1990s, the Bodoland Liberation Tigers or BLT was the most influential of these armed groups.

It was led by Mohilary.

In 2003, an agreement was signed between the Tigers and the Centre, which led to the formation of a territorial council spread over four districts in western Assam under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution.

The council now governs five districts – Kokrajhar, Chirang, Baksa, Tamulpur, and Udalguri – and sends 15 MLAs to the house of 126.

Since the 2003 pact, the Mohilary-led BPF has largely been the primary player in mainstream Bodo politics. Mohilary was the undisputed “chief” of the council, winning all council elections till 2020. In 2016, it formed an alliance with the BJP and joined the Sarbananda Sonowal government.

However, in 2020, the BPF and the saffron party had an acrimonious parting of ways during the council elections.

BJP leaders accused Mohilary of corruption and of links with insurgents. Even though the BPF emerged as the single largest party, the BJP teamed up with the United People’s Party Liberal to cobble together a government and took control of the council.

Mohilary accused Sarma of rigging the polls.

But soon after Himanta Biswa Sarma became the chief minister, Mohilary sent feelers of reconciliation to the central leadership of the BJP – and his party joined the government two years later.

The hostilities between Sarma and Mohilary again spilled over into the Bodoland Territorial Council elections last September.

The BPF swept the polls, emphatically defeating the saffron ally United People’s Party Liberal or UPPL, winning 28 of the 40 seats in the council.

“What did not work for the UPPL was their inability to ward off state government interference in council functions,” said Mizinksa Daimari, who teaches development studies at Amity University, Uttar Pradesh. There was also widespread resentment over the proposed handover of 3600 bighas of land to a large corporation for a thermal power project in the region, he said.

A Guwahati-based senior journalist, who declined to be identified, said the victory was proof of Mohilary's influence in the region.

“Apart from his personal charisma, he has managed the art of social engineering by practicising inclusive politics, by accommodating both religious and linguistic minorities," the journalist said. “Four of his 28 councillors in the Bodoland Territorial Council are Muslims.”

In the run-up to the council elections, Mohilary promised land pattas to all residents of Bodoland, asserting that no family will have to face eviction and that the council would work for the overall development of all communities – a stark contrast to the Himanta Biswa Sarma government approach towards Muslims of Bengali origin. “We do not divide people on the basis of religion. The BPF is of the view that all sections of people should have equal rights,” said the BPF vice-president Prabeen Baro.

The Bodoland Territorial Council includes a significant percentage of voters who are Muslims of Bengali origin, pointed out political commentator and veteran journalist Sushanta Talukdar. “The BJP hopes that Muslim voters in Bodoland will back Hagrama,” he said. “In the event of BJP falling short of the magic number, it will have BPF to fall back on for government formation.”

Despite the history of contestations, analysts said, Mohilary has kept the door open for the BJP.

“In the council election last year, Hagrama never directly confronted or criticized the BJP,” Deka, the senior research fellow of political science at Gauhati University, said. “He had even said that it would emerge as the second largest party in the elections. This was an early signal that an inclusion or a space within the NDA fold was never outside his political strategy.”

Political analyst Rajan Pandey, too, called it “very much a political compulsion”. “The politics of councils runs on the money of the Centre, out and out,” he said. “So, the council has to keep the Centre in good humor. And that’s what forces them to accommodate anybody who is at the Centre. If the same party is in power at both the Centre and the State, then it puts more pressure on them.”

Earlier too, the BPF had allied with the Congress when the latter was in power in Dispur and New Delhi, Pandey said.

Baro, Mohilary’s aide, elaborated: “All Sixth Schedule councils or autonomous councils have to make some sort of understanding with the ruling party.”

Even so, analysts pointed out that the alliance lacked trust. “The alliance with the BJP should be viewed more as a product of political necessity than an expression of full support for the central party,” said Daimary, the teacher from Amity University. “The BPF remains cautious, especially given how it was sidelined in the 2020 and 2021 elections. As a result, the current partnership cannot be described as a ‘wholehearted’ alliance.”

The risk for Mohilary, said Pandey, lies in how differently the BJP approaches tribal politics from the Congress.

“The BJP’s tendency is to devour its alliance partners,” he said. “They have a principle that we should spread everywhere and make it our own territory and start with an alliance and then devour our alliance partner."

He argued that the BJP has always pushed for full control of Bodoland autonomous council – as it has worked towards controlling the Dima Hasao Autonomous Council or the Karbi Autonomous Council, which are now run by the party.

The BJP has also tried to break Mohilary’s party, by making a senior BPF leader, Biswajit Daimary, the Speaker of the Assembly.

The Congress, Pandey said, “worked on just the opposite principle”. “They ally with the strongest person in an area, give them a cabinet portfolio, sign an accord, and then let them have their say in that area. The party never actually tried to raise strong Bodo leaders.”

Pandey said there was little space left for the Congress in Bodoland.

Even Congress leaders admit that their organisation is the weakest in Bodoland since 2006. The party drew a blank in the last council elections.

“We have a probability of winning only three seats out of 15,” a senior Congress spokesperson, requesting anonymity, told Scroll.

Neither the BPF nor the other Bodo party, UPPL, contacted the party for a pre-poll alliance, the Congress leader said. “They may decide on it after the elections,” the spokesperson said.

Source: Scroll
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