Assam Assembly Election Results 2026 | Gaurav & his Ahom card fall flat as Congress hits 25-year low

Guwahati: "Eibar juj ekhon hobo," (there will be a fight this time). Gaurav Gogoi tried to make this a punchline soon after he was made the president of Assam Pradesh Congress Committee in May 2025. 

In Gaurav, Congress got a leader after the vacuum left behind by his father and former Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, who died in 2020. Gaurav's surprising victory in Jorhat Lok Sabha seat in 2024 despite the delimitation encouraged the Congress to field him for Assembly polls for the first time in Jorhat.

The 43-year-old Gaurav repeated the same punch line in March when three Gogois —Gaurav, Akhil and Lurinjyoti — joined hands and finalised the seat-sharing pact with a target to unseat Himanta Biswa Sarma-led BJP and its allies after 10 years.

Gaurav decided to forge alliance with Akhil's party Raijor Dal and Lurinjyoti's Assam Jatiya Parishad hoping to cash in on the votes of the Ahom community in Upper Assam. 

The results for the Assembly elections announced on Monday turned disastrous with the Congress under Gaurav's command facing its worst performance in the past 25 years with just 19 seats. Gaurav lost in his debut Assembly polls in Jorhat against veteran BJP leader Hitendra Nath Goswami by a margin of over 23,000 votes.

Lurinjyoti too failed to break the jinx of his defeat since 2021 polls as he lost to Chakradhar Gogoi, the sitting BJP MLA (also an Ahom) in Khowang in Upper Assam's Dibrugarh district by more than 10,000 votes.

AJP too failed to open its account and lost in all 10 seats. Only Akhil Gogoi managed to win in Sivasagar for the second straight term while Mehboob Muktar registered the second victory for his party in Dhing, a Muslim-majority seat in Central Assam. 

Eighteen out of the 19 constituencies where Congress candidates registered victories, are Muslim-dominated and Joy Prakash Das is the only non-Muslim winner for Congress in Naoboicha in North Assam. 

Inexperience blamed

Congress insiders in Assam blamed Gaurav's inexperience as the main reason behind the party's worst performance and defeat for the third straight term.

"He only tried to create hype over the Gogoi equation without realising the fact that Ahoms are no longer as influential as they used to be before the delimitation. Instead he should have focused more on countering the communal narrative created by BJP and Himanta Biswa Sarma to get the votes of the indigenous voters back," a Congress leader told DH.

He also blamed the lack of clarity in manifesto on how Congress would solve the state's long foreigners issue. "Himanta, on the other hand, was very clear, constantly targeting the Bengali-speaking Muslims and implementing schemes such as land patta to tea garden workers and increasing quota for the ethnic communities. Such schemes helped BJP as those seek to address the identity concerns of the indigenous communities."

Gaurav was also blamed for the delay in the seat-sharing with the allies, something which delayed the campaigns. 

Congress's defeat also came as a setback for Gaurav, who tried to take revenge against Himanta for the defeat his father Tarun Gogoi faced in 2016, months after Himanta quit Congress and joined the saffron party. Himanta, Tarun Gogoi's close aide for long, quit after Gaurav's entry into politics in 2012-13. 

Commenting on Congress's strategy of banking on three Gogois, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Monday evening said people rejected Congress as it sought to win the elections by trying to divide people on the basis of caste.

"There is no place for caste-based politics in Assam and this is where Gaurav Gogoi got wrong," he said.  

Sarma also said Congress's attempt to play politics over Zubeen Garg's death caused it dearly as Zubeen was above politics.