Thousands of residents turned out in Dhemaji on Thursday, November 5 to receive Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma as his #SaveDemocracyRemoveAnarchy yatra rolled through the upper-Assam district — a show of numbers that the Chief Minister wasted no time in turning into a pointed political message aimed squarely at the Congress.

The charge Sarma is riding into Dhemaji

In a combative post, Sarma framed the outpouring as a popular verdict on the state of Assam's politics: 'Hazaron logon ki bhagidari ne saaf kar diya ki Assam ki shanti aur sadbhav Congress ki rajnitik anarchya aur jhuthe narrative ki bhent nahin chadenge' — 'The participation of thousands has made it clear that Assam's peace and harmony will not be sacrificed at the altar of Congress's political anarchy and false narratives.' He opened with a sharper jab: 'They are afraid to debate in Parliament, yet they roam around with a contract to tarnish democracy.'

The double accusation — that the opposition dodges parliamentary debate while simultaneously weaponising a 'democracy in danger' narrative — is a calculated inversion. BJP is essentially arguing that the party loudest about saving democracy is the one destabilising it on the ground.

Why Dhemaji, and why now

Dhemaji district, tucked in upper Assam along the border with Arunachal Pradesh, is a predominantly rural constituency with a history of ethnic tension and insurgency that the BJP has repeatedly cited as evidence of Congress-era governance failures. Bringing the yatra here is not incidental — it speaks directly to communities that lived through that instability and are sensitive to any suggestion that it could return.

Sarma crossed over from Congress to BJP in 2015, and his insider knowledge of the Congress political playbook has consistently been his sharpest campaign weapon. Since leading the party to a second consecutive Assam assembly win in 2021, he has used district-level yatras as a tool to maintain direct voter contact between election cycles — keeping the BJP's ground machine warm well ahead of the next assembly contest.

The broader pattern: order versus anarchy as a state-level brand

The #SaveDemocracyRemoveAnarchy framing is part of a deliberate BJP counter-narrative at the state level. Where the national opposition has campaigned on 'democracy under threat' from the ruling party, Assam's BJP flips the script: in the Northeast, it argues, it was decades of Congress rule that brought ethnic conflict, weak governance, and political violence. Peace, the party claims, is a BJP product.

That argument resonates differently in a district like Dhemaji than it might in a metropolitan constituency — and Sarma knows his audience. The optics of a large, enthusiastic crowd in a border district serve as both a political temperature-check and a signal to opponents that the state's political centre of gravity has not shifted.

With the yatra still moving through Assam's districts, the Congress will need more than a counter-rally to dislodge that narrative — and silence, as Sarma's taunt about Parliament suggests, will only sharpen the attack.