GUWAHATI
The return of Assam’s Sarbananda Sonowal and Arunachal Pradesh’s Kiren Rijiju to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre was more or less expected.
Pabitra Margherita, the third face from the northeast in the Narendra Modi-led government, and a Rajya Sabha member from Assam, has been a surprise package.
All are Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) parliamentarians. Mr. Sonowal and Mr. Rijiju are among the 13 MPs elected from Lok Sabha seats across the northeast comprising eight States and 25 Lok Sabha constituencies.
The 61-year-old Mr. Sonowal, a former Chief Minister who won from the Dibrugarh Lok Sabha constituency, belongs to the Sonowal Kachari community. A resident of eastern Assam’s Dibrugarh district, he won the Dibrugarh seat for the second time — the first in 2004 as a candidate of the Asom Gana Parishad, and now as the BJP’s minor ally in the Assam government.
Mr. Rijiju, 52, is a Buddhist from the Miji or Sajolang community, hailing from the Nafra area of West Kameng district. He won the Arunachal West seat for the fourth time, thrice in succession.
The 49-year-old Mr. Margherita is from Margherita, an industrial town in eastern Assam’s Tinsukia district, a part of the Dibrugarh Lok Sabha seat. His original name is Pabitra Gogoi but he uses the town’s name as his surname.
He was a cultural activist specialising in film-making before joining the BJP in 2014, a watershed year for the party in Assam. Elected as a Rajya Sabha member in 2022, he is also the political secretary to Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.
It is believed that Mr. Margherita’s induction into the Modi Cabinet is the BJP’s strategy to counter the impact of the perceived Congress resurgence in eastern Assam after Gaurav Gogoi’s victory from the Jorhat constituency. Eastern Assam largely comprises the Dibrugarh, Jorhat, and Kaziranga Lok Sabha seats.
Like Mr. Gogoi, Mr. Margherita is an Ahom, a politically potent community in eastern Assam, along with the Adivasis or the “tea tribes”. Together, they dictate the fate of 49 Assembly segments in the three eastern Assam constituencies, and the adjoining ones across northern and central Assam.
The BJP has been winning most of these Assembly seats since 2016 but Mr. Gogoi’s electoral win — despite Dr. Sarma and his team focusing their energy and party resources on Jorhat — has been interpreted as a sign that the Ahoms and Adivasis could be disillusioned with the BJP ahead of the crucial 2026 Assembly polls.
Letting Congress regain lost ground in eastern Assam, which helped the Congress form the government thrice in succession under Tarun Gogoi, is expected to put the BJP in a tight spot.
For the record, the BJP trailed in all but one of the 10 Assembly segments of the Jorhat Lok Sabha seat. The lone segment in which it was Majuli, where the Mishing tribe and the caste Assamese are the dominant communities.
Mr. Sonowal, a choice of an older set of BJP leaders, represented Majuli before shifting to the Centre.