To Dust Off Bihar Defeat, BJP Appoints Sarbananda Sonowal Assam Chief

Keen to put behind the Bihar debacle and signal that the BJP is ready for the next round of assembly polls, the party today named Union Sports Minister Sarbananda Sonowal as its new Assam unit chief.

Assam is the only state going to polls in 2016 which the BJP has a realistic chance of winning, political observers say. The party's vote share has seen a huge surge in the past few years.

In the Lok Sabha elections last year, the BJP amassed nearly 37 per cent of the vote and won half of the 14 Lok Sabha seats. Under Mr Sonowal - a former student leader of the All Assam Students' Union who was at the forefront of the anti-foreigner movement - the BJP delivered its best ever performance.

This time, the party is hoping for a repeat in the assembly polls. More importantly, by projecting Mr Sonowal as the man to lead the party into polls, the BJP is perhaps trying to avoid its Bihar experiment where no one was named as the alliance's chief ministerial candidate.

Mr Sonowal, though, downplayed him being the chief ministerial candidate. "No, it's not a question of being a chief ministerial candidate. I have been entrusted with this responsibility for the sake of the people of Assam," he told NDTV.

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Mr Sonowal's first public felicitation after being named as the new state president was held in the constituency of Himanta Biswa Sarma, a former minister in Tarun Gogoi's government who had deflected to the BJP in August and was being seen as a contender for the party's top post in Assam.

The Congress, on the other hand, has said that Mr Sonowal being named as the BJP president for a second time, indicates a leadership vacuum.

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"Sonowal being appointed again shows that there is no leadership alternative," said senior Congress leader Apurba Bhattacharjya. "He is just an agent of Modiji and Amit Shahji and people of Assam won't accept them," he added.