A Misguided Missile in Assam’s Political Sky

When Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma decided to unleash the Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi’s wife, he believed he was firing a precision strike. The optics were crafted perfectly: a hardline leader exposing “foreign connections” and playing the role of Assam’s vigilant guardian of national security. But in reality, the missile has strayed off course—landing closer to Sarma’s own political credibility than his opponent’s turf.

At first glance, the issue sounds dramatic enough to stir any nationalist pulse: a Congress MP’s spouse, a British national, with past links to a Pakistani NGO. In Sarma’s telling, it is a matter of sovereignty, a threat to national interest. Yet, the question arises: why is Assam Police—whose mandate is internal law and order—probing a matter that clearly falls under the purview of central agencies like NIA, IB, or the Ministry of External Affairs? This is where the narrative wobbles. Instead of a security crusade, it begins to look like an overzealous political vendetta disguised as patriotism.

The gamble is obvious. Gaurav Gogoi, the son of former CM Tarun Gogoi, remains one of Congress’s brightest faces in Assam, having wrested Jorhat from the BJP despite the Sarma juggernaut. To dent his credibility, to tag him as “soft on Pakistan,” would be a prize catch in Assam’s polarized political theatre. But Sarma may have miscalculated. By dragging a family member into the mud, he risks creating a sympathy wave around Gogoi and handing Congress an emotive issue: the misuse of state machinery for political vendetta.

For the BJP, the move fits neatly into its larger playbook—national security as the ultimate weapon of political delegitimization. Yet Assam is not Delhi. Here, everyday voters grapple more with the anxieties of flood, unemployment, and ethnic fault lines than with the ghosts of foreign conspiracies. Sarma’s posturing may energize BJP cadres, but among the wider electorate it risks looking like a diversionary stunt, a dramatic missile show in the sky while real crises rage on the ground.

The Delhi dimension cannot be ignored. By projecting himself as a hawk aligned with Amit Shah, Sarma reinforces his national ambitions. But if the Centre chooses not to back this investigation with the same intensity, Sarma risks looking like an overenthusiastic loyalist—firing a missile without Delhi’s clearance.

Politics, after all, is about timing, balance, and target-lock. Sarma’s SIT move shows neither. Instead of cornering his rival, he may have given Gogoi the rare gift of victimhood in a state where sympathy often translates into votes.

So, what was meant to be a show of political strength now risks becoming a spectacle of political overreach. In the crowded arena of Assam politics, Himanta Biswa Sarma’s missile may have lit up the sky for a moment, but it missed its mark—and in missing, revealed just how precarious power games can become when strategy turns into spectacle.