Congress leader and LoP in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi speaks during a party workers’ meeting at Chaygaon, near Guwahati, on July 16, 2025. | Photo Credit: PTI

Assam CM will go to jail after Assembly polls for ‘large-scale graft’: Rahul

Himanta Biswa Sarma hit back at Rahul Gandhi, saying the Congress MP is out on bail for criminal cases across the country

by · The Hindu

Congress MP and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, on Wednesday (July 16, 2025), said Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma will be in jail for “stealing people’s lands” and “large-scale corruption” after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) loses the State polls in 2026.

Addressing a party rally at Chhaygaon, about 40 km southwest of Guwahati, he said the Congress would sweep the elections because of the BJP’s “politics of hate and violence”, and the groundwork done by the State party president Gaurav Gogoi and his team.

“Soon, the media will show your Chief Minister going to jail and neither (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi nor (Union Home Minister) Amit Shah can save him,” Mr. Gandhi said.

“When you go home and see him (Mr. Sarma) on TV, observe his eyes. They convey fear from the depths of his heart because he knows the Congress will put him in jail. He knows he will be answerable for the corruption he and his family have indulged in,” he said.

Referring to a series of eviction drives across the State, Mr. Gandhi said the youth, farmers, and daily wage earners of Assam wanted to see the Chief Minister behind bars because “they know he is corrupt, and steals land from the people 24 hours a day for a solar park or resort”.

Thousands of acres of land had been taken from the poor, and farmers were being given to “Adani, Ambani, Ramdev” under one pretext or another, he said. “India’s forest, air, water, and land are being sold to five-six industrialists,” he added.

Mr. Gandhi also cautioned the people against possible manipulation of the electoral rolls ahead of the Assam election. “The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Election Commission of India are working in tandem to change laws and tamper with the voters’ list. They did it in Maharashtra, where one crore voters were added in four months; they are doing it in Bihar with the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls; they will do it in Assam,” he said.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge also took a swipe at Mr. Sarma and exuded hope that the grand old party would return to power in Assam.

Himanta Biswa Sarma-Rahul Gandhi spar

Earlier, Mr. Gogoi said Mr. Sarma was acting like a “real estate broker” and engaging in large-scale land transfers to industrialists from outside the State. “The Chief Minister and his colleagues are dispossessing the poor and the marginalised. The Congress party in Assam will fight for justice for every citizen suffering under a regime of fear and terror,” he said.

The Assam Chief Minister hit back at Mr. Gandhi and his party colleagues. “He came all the way to Assam just to say this (jail for graft), conveniently forgetting that he himself is out on bail in multiple criminal cases registered across the country,” he wrote on social media platform X.

A former Congress leader, Mr. Sarma has frequently engaged in a war of words with Mr. Gandhi since joining the BJP in 2015.