As Assam gears up for assembly election early next year, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has already set a combative tone for the campaign. In recent months, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has launched an aggressive, and legally contentious, drive to identify and deport “illegal Bangladeshis”. This move has involved reviving decades-old laws, sidelining the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and stirring a combustible mix of security, identity and religion in the state’s political discourse.
