The Congress and JMM are in alliance in Jharkhand and are running the government together. However, JMM has set its foot into Assam politics and will be contesting the 9 April assembly elections independently. Since the target voters of the JMM are tribals in Upper Assam, the focus is on whether the new entrant in the election can influence outcomes in the region and change the results in seats where tribals dominate.
Earlier, the Congress, according to sources, had offered five seats, with three more to be contested as friendly fights; however, the JMM had demanded more, which was not acceptable to the Congress leadership. As the JMM has announced it will contest 18 assembly seats, it marks the party's most ambitious political expansion beyond Jharkhand, where it is targeting the more than 65-lakh-strong tea tribe population, including the Santhal, Munda, Oraon and Kurukh communities—tribes seen to have origins in Jharkhand. The tea tribe community constitutes about 20 per cent of the state's population.
Congress leaders think Hemant Soren's rallies and his inclusion in the Opposition fold could have strengthened the formation and amplified the alliance's stand of seeking welfare for tribals.
In a recent public rally, Soren said, “The tea tribe community of Assam has waited far too long for justice. Your ancestors built these gardens with their sweat and made Assam prosperous, yet you still fight for your rights and dignity."
He also pointed out the needs of tea garden workers and called the low wages and the lack of proper hospitals and facilities in tea estates pressing concerns, saying his party had come not as an outsider but as a voice for their pain.
JMM's national spokesperson Supriyo Bhattacharya said, "JMM in Assam will be fighting independently. We have separate issues, and Congress has separate issues. It is all issue-based, and for that, we will be contesting alone."
Senior Congress leaders talking about failure to stitch up an alliance think that there was a problem in coordination. As the negotiations should have started between the Congress Jharkhand leadership and the JMM leadership in Jharkhand, rather than directly between the Assam leadership and the JMM leadership, which failed to set up a foundational negotiation as well as materialise ultimately. "What happened was that the Assam leadership, state unit president Gaurav Gogoi and state unit in-charge Bhanwar Jitendra Singh, came to negotiate directly with the JMM leadership, which looked out of place," a senior Congress leader in Jharkhand said.
However, political observers think that since the tribal population votes both ways in Assam, towards Congress as well as the BJP, the JMM's entry may not impact Congress significantly, as voters tend to back formations that have stronger chances of winning. "A new entrant won't make much of a difference," a political analyst said.
For instance, the JMM does not have any cadre, leadership, or local workers who can carry forward the party leadership's instructions and nurture constituencies at the local level. This will hinder the potential of the JMM to garner votes, as most people will only be aware of it at a surface level and may not trust that the new party can come to power when the Congress-led formation and the BJP-led alliance are fighting tooth and nail to win the elections.
According to political observers in Assam, the JMM neither has cadre nor any standing in Assam politics. "By fielding its Jharkhand leadership in Assam, it has merely forayed into Assam politics; JMM's arrival does not make any substantial difference," another political analyst said.