Where Abusive Rhetoric Meets the Machinery of Selective Silence
Can a Chief Minister win by using filthy, foul language against his political opponents while spewing open venom for an entire community—citizens who are equally Indian and equally patriotic? And what action did the Election Commission of India take against his relentless violations?
By Onkareshwar Pandey
New Delhi, May 03, 2026
The results for Assam along with five other states are being announced, one question will remain hanging over the Brahmaputra like a toxic smog: Can a Chief Minister win by using filthy, foul language against his political opponents while spewing open venom for an entire community—citizens who are equally Indian and equally patriotic? And what action did the Election Commission of India take against his relentless violations?
Let us speak plain. Mr. Pawan Khera raised a valid question of corruption regarding the Chief Minister’s family. The validity of the passports he questioned has not been officially denied by the Ministry of External Affairs or the concerned embassies. Let the apex court take the final call. But history is a brutal teacher. We have seen this movie before—the 2G scam, the Commonwealth Games scam, the Coal scam, the National Herald case. The BJP made monumental allegations then. The result? The Supreme Court gave a clean chit to the Congress leadership in those cases.
But have we ever seen such a massive misuse of state police machinery as we witnessed coming after Mr. Pawan Khera like a wolf pack? Have you ever seen a Congress leader—even in the heat of the fiercest debate—publicly abusing Atal Bihari Vajpayee or L.K. Advani with the kind of gutter language normalized today? What is this Chal, Chatritra aur Chehra (Fake character, fake face) politics you have reduced the national discourse to? Assam has become the laboratory for a new, jagged form of politics: Cowboy Constitutionalism, where the Chief Minister acts as the judge, jury, and executioner of political discourse.
THE IRONIES OF THE ‘CONVERT’ – FROM ‘SCAMS’ TO SWITCHING SIDES
To understand the current rot, one must revisit the summer of 2015. Before he became the BJP’s mascot for "transformation," Himanta Biswa Sarma was the BJP’s prime exhibit of corruption.
On July 22, 2015, the Bharatiya Janata Party released a 64-page booklet titled ‘Saga of Scams in Congress-ruled States’ . This was not a rumour; it was an official party publication. Page one detailed the alleged Guwahati Water Supply Scam, naming the "then very powerful minister" as a "prime suspect". The BJP alleged the firm involved had offered "huge sums of money as bribes" to ministers. Simultaneously, he was being questioned by the CBI in the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam .
Then, just over a month later, on August 23, 2015, the "prime suspect" walked into Amit Shah’s residence and joined the BJP. Miraculously, the CBI summons stopped. The files allegedly went missing. As a senior Congress leader later noted, Sarma knows he is an "import," which is why he must "perform harder than anyone else" . The man who once told a crowd that in Gujarat the "blood of Muslims flows through the pipes" now governs Assam on a platform of hardline Hindutva. This ideologicalgymnastics is not conviction; it is the desperate performance of a man running from his own past.
THE DELIMITATION GERRYMANDER – RIGGING THE MAP
Forget the vote counting; the Himanta government rigged the constituencies first. In August 2023, the Election Commission completed a delimitation exercise that has been widely criticized by opposition and civil society as a brazen act of gerrymandering.
The government’s defense is that it corrected "decades of political imbalance". But let us look at the data. The exercise redrew boundaries focusing on Lower Assam, specifically altering the composition of minority-dominated seats. In Jalukbari, the Chief Minister’s own constituency, areas with large indigenous Assamese populations were added, while Muslim-majority areas on the north bank were excised.
The Chief Minister openly talks of adding 63 new Assembly seats due to the Women’s Reservation Bill, promising to "revive" abolished seats for political benefit. While the nation debates women’s empowerment, Assam is debating how to cut the map into pieces that favour the ruling syndicate. The Congress has called it a "conspiracy," and the math of the boundaries suggests they are right to be worried.
THE NUMBERS DON’T LIE – CAG, DEBT, AND THE FAILED PROMISES
Enough of the drama. Let us look at the ledger. The Assam Pradesh Congress Committee released a "People’s Chargesheet" based on CAG reports, RBI assessments, and media investigations—documents the government cannot dismiss as fiction.
1. The Debt Trap: Assam’s debt has crossed Rs 2 lakh crore and was projected to hit Rs 2.06 lakh crore by April 2026. The CAG 2023-24 report flagged Rs 26,160.80 crore in pending utilization certificates—money spent without accountability.
2. The ‘Syndicate’ Raj: The chargesheet alleges a parallel economy worth Rs 1.6 lakh crore operating under state protection. This includes coal smuggling, "Goru Syndicate" (cattle smuggling), and illegal timber trade, with fixed commissions collected at checkpoints.
3. The Land Grab: The government is accused of handing over vast tracts of tribal land to corporate houses—2,970 acres in Dima Hasao to Adani for a cement factory, 4,000 acres in Karbi Anglong to Reliance for a biogas project, and 1,188 acres in Kokrajhar to Adani for a thermal power plant.
4. The NRC Ghost: The government spent Rs 1,600 crore on the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which excluded over 19 lakh names. Yet the final list has never been notified. The Chief Minister now says Assam will deport "foreigners" even if their names are in the NRC. He admits the NRC is "doubtful". So, 19 lakh people live in a legal void, and not even 19 hundred have been deported. The promise was a weapon; the delivery is a fraud.