New Delhi: This afternoon, barely two days after online journalist Dilwar Hussain Mozumder was released by a local court in Guwahati, the Assam police arrested his brother, Taibur Rahman Mozumder, in his home town Hojai on the charge of land-grabbing, PTI reported.As the news emerged, chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma was quick to speak about the arrest to the local press.What he said about the family of the journalist – who was arrested last week while covering serious allegations of financial bungling at a co-operative bank of which Sarma is director – speaks volumes.That is, if you take into account the voting that would take place in two of the state’s districts tomorrow (April 2) to re-elect an autonomous council.The chief minister told reporters in Biswanath district:“That so-called Dilwar’s brother is an established land grabber; he was arrested earlier too, in 2021. He is a teacher [in a government school], even after the police had filed the chargesheet in the case, the state government didn’t sack him. So you can see that they have spread their tentacles so deep, also into the government. Even that Dilwar is a dumper vyapari [trader]; he has no attributes of a journalist; ask anyone in Hojai, they will tell you that the entire family is known for land-grabbing.”The Wire couldn’t immediately get through to the Assam police to gather more details of the charges against Mozumder’s brother.The Kachua police station that detained him on April 1 has not given any formal statement on the matter yet.Whether the filing of a chargesheet against a person – which is not the same as a conviction by a court for committing a crime – constitutes grounds for the government to sack a teacher is not clear yet.However, what is becoming increasingly clear is the intention of the chief minister and his camp within the BJP – to keep the episode around Mozumder’s arrest boiling in the local media.His press conference on Dilwar’s arrest in Guwahati on March 27 and the derisive comments on the matter till today signifies that the chief minister has targeted the journalist to ensure that the matter continues to hit the headlines at least till April 2.Let us first look at the significance of April 2 in Assam politics.Come tomorrow morning, a considerable chunk from a total number of 4,45,586 voters residing in the state’s Kamrup (Rural) and Goalpara districts will line up at 630 polling stations to elect a fresh set of executive members for the Rabha Hasong Autonomous Council.The Council for the Rabha plains tribe was formed in 1995. The Rabha Hasong Joutha Mancha (RHJM). Tankeswar Rabha has been leading the Council.Over the years, the biggest demand sprouting from within the Rabha community has been its inclusion within the Sixth Schedule. This is also because the autonomous council for the Bodo community comes under the Sixth Schedule. Both Bodos and Rabhas are plains tribes and are classified as Scheduled Tribes.The demand within the community that the ruling BJP include the Council under the Sixth Schedule has, therefore, been simmering – much like the clamour being raised by the people of Ladakh lately.With the elections to the Council looming, the issue has come to the fore once again.However, the BJP has played its cards rather cleverly. It has formed a pre-poll alliance with the incumbent party, the RHJM, to contest the polls for the first time.The message it wants to send to Rabha voters is clear: if elected, the party, together with RHJM, will be able to deliver more strength to the Council, since the national party is also in power in New Delhi.While the RHJM, through this alliance, is also hoping to weaken anti-incumbency against it, the BJP is expecting to grab power at the Council primarily because there are at least ten assembly seats between these two districts. Assam will head to the polls in early 2026.In the last Council polls, the RHJM had single-handedly pocketed 33 of the 40 seats, while both the BJP and its ally the Asom Gana Parishad won one seat each. The opposition Congress could also win only one seat then.Because of the pre-poll alliance, Sarma, along with party state president Dilip Saikia, could be seen campaigning jointly with RHJM chief and current chief executive councillor Tankeswar Rabha.This past March 29, on the sidelines of a party’s rally for the Council polls on March 29 in Boko near Guwahati, Sarma, on his own, had also referred to the arrest of the journalist associated with the web portal, The CrossCurrent.“Whenever possible, I have taken action against the Dilwar-s too,” he told reporters at Boko.Standing next to Sarma, Tankeswar Rabha was all smiles.Both leaders were hoping that with such statements, the polarisation of votes would help them emerge victorious when the counting ends on April 4.The elections for the Council have never been free of controversies. For a full decade, elections were not held by the Tarun Gogoi government because a large number of non-Rabha residents were vehemently opposed to it.In the run-up to the 2013 elections, massive protests had erupted in that area demanding that villages that were not predominantly Rabha must be kept out of Council areas.The protesters had then claimed that there were 91 non-tribal villages in Goalpara district and 134 non-tribal villages in the southern part of Kamrup district.Since Goalpara is contiguous with the Garo hills of Meghalaya, a sizable number of the population is Garo. Counted as a Scheduled Tribe in Meghalaya, the Garos have been demanding a separate council for the community within Assam too, and have hence been boycotting the Rabha Hasong Autonomous Council polls for the last ten years.In 2021, the Council elections were held in three phases under heavy security because the polls were again opposed by the non-tribals and also the Garos.This time though, the Garos have decided to participate in the polls.What is left now of the community-wise voter base is why, for Sarma, “the Dilwar’s” have become important.Both the Kamrup (Rural) and Goalpara districts also have a sizable population of Muslims of East Bengali origin, the community that Mozumder belongs to.That he was also charged under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act by the bank official seen close to Sarma makes sense now.What also makes sense is Mozumder’s brother’s detention on the charge of land-grabbing. Across Assam, particularly in districts where the community is in large numbers and cohabits close to the tribal and Assamese villages, the colonial image of the ‘Miya’ as the land-grabber is rather strong to this day.With the counting of the Council polls slated for April 4, Sarma will likely lose interest in the ‘Dilwar-s’ by the first week of April.But not for long. In an election-bound state, with anti-incumbency against his government on the rise due to allegations of corruption and land-gabbing by his immediate family, particularly in Upper Assam, which has the largest number of assembly constituencies, the chief minister might soon need to fall back on this tried and tested polarisation strategy for electioneering.
