Voting for the assembly elections in Assam began earlier this month, with one more phase to go.
It's not the terrible road to his village, but being branded a Bangladeshi, that 22-year-old Akhirul Islam, a first-time voter in the Assam assembly elections, says is the biggest poll issue.
Akhirul lives in Hathsingimari, a block in Assam's Dhubri district on the Bangladesh border - an area which has become the epicentre of Assam's infiltration politics.
"The thing that is most irritating is that every time you go to a big city like Guwahati and people get to know you are from Dhubri, they immediately start calling you Bangladeshi," says Akhirul, who runs a shop 50 km away from his home.
The BJP, looking to win Assam after 15 years of Congress rule, blames the ruling party for drawing Bangladeshi Muslims into India for votes. At a recent Assam rally, BJP president Amit Shah said, "When we come to power not even a bird will be able to cross the border."
The BJP has promised to secure borders and curb illegal immigration.
Assam's Muslim population, at 34 per cent now, grew the most for any state between 2001 and 2011 - years the Congress was in power.
The reality on the border though, is a little more complex.
In Dhubri, which has the highest number of Muslims in Assam, the Brahmaputra river cuts through India and Bangladesh, leaving over 45 km of the border is "naked" or unfenced, and open to crossings despite Border Security Force pickets and river patrolling.
Assam has seen Muslim migration for over a century. A complex arrangement was introduced after widespread violence against migrants in the 80's mandates that all those who entered from Bangladesh after 1971 need to be sent back.
A section of the Brahmaputra river, with Bangladesh on the other side, remains unfenced.
But in the last two decades, only 2,000 people have been sent back and an exercise to check documents of all Assamese citizens is still on.
"I don't want the vote of any Bangladeshi but I want the vote of Indian Muslims. The BJP says all Muslims are Bangladeshi, that's not correct either," said Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, who is looking to win a fourth straight term in the state.
But he also faces a challenge from Badruddin Ajmal of the AIUDF, whose party has gained ground in Assam in the last decade, mainly on the plank of protecting Muslims in the state.