Guwahati: In Assam’s 2026 assembly elections, the word “outsider” is doing a lot of work and very little explaining. Over the past decade, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has repeatedly used the figure of the Bengali‑origin Muslim, often referred to as “Miya,” to define who does and does not belong in Assam. Sarma has, over the years, repeatedly said that his party does not need “Miya votes” to win elections.But the party’s electoral strategy tells a different story, one in which the category of the “outsider” becomes flexible depending on political need. The BJP is contesting 89 of the 126 assembly seats this election without fielding a single Muslim candidate on its own ticket. Many of the seats with significant Muslim populations are being contested by its ally, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), which has announced 13 Muslim candidates among its 26 nominees, including former members of the All-India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), a party the BJP has long derided. AIUDF MLA Karim Uddin Barbhuiya joins the Asom Gana Parishad in the presence of party president Atul Bora and working president Keshav Mahanta at the party headquarters, in Ambari, in Guwahati on March 9, 2026. Photo: PTI.This arrangement allows the BJP to maintain a hardline Hindutva image publicly while letting its ally carry the burden of minority representation. Kasturi Boruah, spokesperson of AGP, defended the decision, saying, “AGP is a secular party and believes in secular morals, so we gave tickets to Bengali Muslims because we are concerned about marginalised communities… The BJP is only against land encroachments and illegal immigrants, not against Bengali Muslims, and it is a healthy alliance.”This distinction attempts to separate rhetoric from electoral practice, but it does little to resolve the contradiction. AIUDF spokesperson Mehdi Hassan Khan pointed to this within the NDA alliance: “The chief minister says he does not need Miya Muslim votes, but he is projecting the AGP as a Muslim party. A regional party like AGP that once ruled Assam for two terms is now being turned into this.” He added that many Bengali Muslim candidates fielded by AGP had earlier links with Himanta Biswa Sarma, and concluded, “This is just another way for the BJP to access Muslim votes.”Migration, the Assam Accord and electoral dynamicsThe political use of the “outsider” category sits within a longer history of migration in Assam. Movement into the region predates contemporary political debates. During the colonial period, labour migration from Bengal into Assam’s agricultural and plantation economies played a central role in shaping its demographic structure.Following Partition and the Bangladesh war in 1971, migration continued, resulting in a multi-layered settlement history. In public discourse, migration has often been reframed into a singular narrative of threat, used to mobilise political support.The construction of the “outsider” in Assam can be traced to the Assam Accord, which institutionalised a historically contingent boundary between belonging and exclusion. Signed on 15 August 1985, the Accord ended a six-year anti-foreigner agitation led by the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), which had mobilised large-scale protests what Assamese perceived as unchecked immigration from Bangladesh. The Accord recognised migrants who entered Assam before January 1, 1966 as citizens, allowed those entering between January 1, 1966 and March 24, 1971 to apply for citizenship registration, and treated migrants arriving on or after March 25, 1971 as illegal foreigners to be identified, deleted from records, and deported.One mechanism to implement the Accord was the National Register of Citizens (NRC), updated between 2013 and 2019, which excluded roughly 1.9 million people, leaving many in legal limbo, as reported by the Times of India. Ahead of the 2026 assembly polls, Assam was excluded from the nationwide Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and is instead undergoing a Special Revision of voter lists without full citizenship verification, pending NRC notification.The Chief Election Commissioner and other officials have explained that Assam cannot undergo a full SIR until the NRC is formally notified, because the state’s electoral rolls must align with verified citizenship data. The Election Commission of India has maintained that a separate order for Assam would be issued once the NRC process is completed, because the state’s electoral rolls must align with verified citizenship data. On the surface, this appears to be a technical and procedural constraint, but it also leaves the definition of “eligible voters” in flux. By deferring full verification, the electoral machinery allows parties to operate within a gray zone where citizenship and the category of the “outsider” remain ambiguous.The political implications of this delay are significant. With citizenship verification postponed, the term “outsider” becomes more fluid and politically potent. Parties can emphasise identity distinctions selectively, leading electoral narratives without facing immediate administrative checks. This ambiguity intersects with debates over the National Register of Citizens, the Citizenship Amendment Act, and the Assam Accord, which has enabled selective political targeting.Protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act in Assam, unlike the national protests, were driven by Assamese concerns over both Bengali Hindus and Muslims. While the CAA allowed excluded Bengali Hindus to gain citizenship, Muslims left out of the National Register of Citizens were rendered stateless. The opposition to the law was about preserving Assamese identity, culture, language, and demographic balance, rather than religion. However, in its political messaging, the BJP has focused primarily on Bengali Muslims as “outsiders.” Assam chief minister and BJP candidate from Jalukbari constituency, Himanta Biswa Sarma, holds a roadshow for campaigning ahead of the state assembly elections in Mangaldoi on March 26, 2026. Photo: PTI.Sarma’s statements make this explicit. Sarma in his recent statements, has openly said, “Trouble the Miya Muslims by any means. If they face trouble, they will go from Assam… We are directly against them. We are not hiding anything; we directly say we are against Miyas.” By repeatedly linking the term “Miya” with encroachment and demographic threat, the label of “outsider” is turned into a tool for targeting an entire Bengali-speaking Muslim community. This rhetoric has had tangible consequences on the ground. In recent years, eviction drives in Upper Assam have displaced thousands of Muslim families on the grounds of alleged encroachment or being “illegal Bangladeshis.” According to Scroll.in, eviction operations in Goalpara district in July 2025 bulldozed the homes of 1,080 families, and across several drives in multiple districts, nearly 3,500 families were displaced, most of them Muslim families of Bengali origin. In many cases, villagers were given very short deadlines to vacate before bulldozers moved in. Entire villages have also been demolished in districts such as Golaghat, Biswanath, and Goalpara, leaving residents without homes and with little indication of rehabilitation or resettlement. These operations affected hundreds, and in some instances thousands of families who had lived in these areas for generations.Also read: Last-Minute Opposition Unity, Rising Communal Pitch and ‘CongJP’ Factor: Eyes on Assam PollsYet, at the height of these operations, the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), despite positioning itself as the primary representative of Bengali Muslims, failed to mount a sustained challenge to the evictions or articulate a broader electoral counter-narrative to how these drives were framed and carried out. There were very few protests and site visits by party legislators to displaced families, and no coordinated statewide response that matched the scale or intensity of the eviction campaign. This relative quietness around one of the most disruptive forms of identity‑linked governance and displacement created a political vacuum that the AGP‑BJP alliance was able to fill. As displacement became a defining issue on the ground, some AIUDF lawmakers switched allegiance to contest elections on AGP tickets, aligning with a partner that was actively implementing these operations.The influence of Baniya CapitalThe strategic deployment of the “outsider” label also coincides with economic power. Investigative reports by organisations like The Reporters’ Collective has highlighted how political funding for the BJP in the Northeast is heavily linked to business interests that have benefitted from government contracts, including from trading communities outside Assam. This suggests that networks of influence and capital, unlike ordinary voters, are not subjected to the same rigid identity politics that the party frames for mass audiences.This raises a different question about the idea of the “outsider.” If language and origin are central to belonging, why does this logic not extend to economic actors with influence?Union home minister Amit Shah greets supporters during an election roadshow in support of NDA candidates from Guwahati Central and Dispur constituencies respectively Vijay Kumar Gupta and Pradyut Bordoloi, ahead of the Assam Assembly elections, in Guwahati on March 28, 2026. Photo: PTI.The BJP’s decision to field a Hindi-speaking candidate, Vijay Kumar Gupta, from Central Guwahati points in this direction. It suggests that economic networks and political utility can override the very identity boundaries that are emphasised in public discourse. In this context, the “outsider” becomes a filtered category. Those without power are marked and targeted, while those with influence are accommodated. Young voters are noticing this uneven application. Imran Hussain, a Bengali Muslim voter, said, “The term ‘outsider’ is used in a way that targets communities like ours even when we are citizens. If someone is truly an outsider, how are they allowed to contest elections? And if they are not, then why are they still treated that way?”For Gaurav Kashyap, a law student in Guwahati, the inconsistency undermines trust in politics. “If identity is the basis, then it should be consistent. Right now, it changes depending on political need,” he said.Bishnu J. is a freelance journalist focussed on the north-eastern region. He writes on caste, identity, representation, and the politics of storytelling.