- Byname:
- Mama
- Born:
- February 1, 1969, Jorhat, Assam, India (age 57)
- Title / Office:
- chief minister (2021-), Assam
- Political Affiliation:
- Bharatiya Janata Party
Himanta Biswa Sarma
Who is Himanta Biswa Sarma?
What was Himanta Biswa Sarma’s political affiliation before he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party?
What was the Assam Agitation?
Why did Himanta Biswa Sarma leave the Indian National Congress?
Himanta Biswa Sarma (born February 1, 1969, Jorhat, Assam, India) is an Indian politician and the chief minister (2021–2026 and 2026–) of Assam state. Once a well-known face of the Indian National Congress (Congress Party) in the state, Sarma moved to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2015 and is credited with helping the party increase its footprint in Assam and other northeastern states. After being elected to the Assam Legislative Assembly from the Jalukbari constituency in 2001 on a Congress ticket, Sarma was reelected from the same constituency five more times: as a Congress candidate in 2006 and 2011 and as a BJP candidate in 2016, 2021, and 2026. He was a state and cabinet minister for key portfolios such as agriculture, finance, health, planning and development, and education between 2001 and 2021. Popularly addressed as Mama (Assamese: “maternal uncle”), especially by the state’s younger population, Sarma is widely regarded as an accessible leader and a strategist. His Assamese sub-nationalist stance (jatiotabad, or loyalty and devotion to Assam, which can be thought of as a “nation within a nation,” and its language and culture) has, in later years, been perceived by critics to be accompanied by a strong pro-Hindutva outlook.
Early life
Sarma was born to Assamese poet and novelist Kailash Nath Sarma and literary activist Mrinalini Devi in Jorhat, Assam. He graduated from Kamrup Academy Higher Secondary School, Guwahati, and completed bachelor’s (1990) and master’s (1992) degrees in political science from Cotton College and Gauhati University, respectively, both in Guwahati. Sarma also earned an LL.B. from the Government Law College, Guwahati, in 1995 and practiced law at the Gauhati High Court for the next five years, before being elected to the Legislative Assembly in 2001. In 2006 he earned a Ph.D. in political science from Gauhati University.
Also called the Assam Movement, the Assam Agitation was a movement against alleged illegal immigration, spearheaded by the student-run AASU and aimed mostly against migrants from Bangladesh. Having shared a border and a history of common administration with East Bengal (East Pakistan from 1955 and Bangladesh from 1971) during British rule, Assam has a long history of migration from the region; the numbers of refugees migrating from East Bengal swelled to millions following the Partition of India (1947) and the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. This was at the root of fears about changing demographics, political power, and loss of cultural and linguistic identity on the part of the local Assamese residents, and it led to years of unrest, public agitation, and communal violence in Assam. The movement culminated in the signing of the Assam Accord (1985), a tripartite agreement between the central and state governments and AASU leaders to establish safeguards to preserve Assamese cultural and linguistic identity and heritage. March 24, 1971, was used as the cutoff date to determine who would be categorized as a foreigner, but stakeholders have had disagreements over the cutoff date.
While studying at Cotton College, Sarma was a student leader and the general secretary of the students’ union in 1991–92. He joined the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), which had led the Assam Movement (1979–1985) against alleged illegal migration. Sarma worked closely with leaders of the agitation, including Prafulla Mahanta and Bhrigu Phukan, who both went on to form the Assam People’s Council (Asom Gana Parishad) political party. About this time Congress leader Hiteswar Saikia encouraged Sarma to compete for a seat in the 1996 assembly elections, against Phukan, his mentor from his student days. Sarma lost to Phukan in 1996 but defeated him in 2001.
In June 2001 Sarma married Riniki Bhuyan, who was a state- and national-level tennis player and later became an entrepreneur, starting, among other businesses, the media house Pride East Entertainments. The couple has a son and a daughter.
The Congress years and the fallout with Tarun Gogoi
As Sarma started his legislative career, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi (2001–16) handed him state ministries such as agriculture and planning and development in 2001. Sarma’s credibility within the party grew, and he was given bigger roles during Gogoi’s second and third terms, including being made a cabinet minister. Sarma earned praise for his strategic skills and his work as health and education minister during this time, as he paved the way to set up five medical colleges in the state and to introduce the teacher eligibility test for appointing teachers, reducing bureaucracy and corruption in the appointment process. He, along with Gogoi’s son, Gaurav Gogoi, played a key role in managing the Congress’s 2011 assembly elections campaign and helped the party win by a large margin.
During Gogoi’s third term, a rift developed between him and Sarma, mostly attributed to a conflict over succession. Gaurav Gogoi, who had formally joined the party in 2012, began to be seen as his father’s successor. The younger Gogoi contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and won from Kaliabor constituency. That year the rift between Sarma and Tarun Gogoi widened, culminating in Sarma challenging Gogoi’s leadership and eventually resigning from the Legislative Assembly and the Congress Party in 2015.
The BJP and chief ministership
Disgruntled with what he described as the Assam Congress’s “family-centric politics,” Sarma joined the BJP in August 2015, and the party gave him the responsibility of allying with other parties in the state and creating a strategy for the BJP to win the 2016 state elections, which would be the party’s first win in the state. When the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance won the elections and Sarbananda Sonowal became chief minister, Sarma was made a cabinet minister with key portfolios such as finance, education, and health. He was also made convenor of the North East Democratic Alliance, a group tasked with forming alliances with various other parties in northeastern India to create a united front against the Congress Party. In the latter role, Sarma helped the BJP and its allies increase their footprint and consolidate power in Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Tripura, and Meghalaya.
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In 2021, when the BJP and its allies won a second consecutive state election, Sarma became the 15th chief minister of the state. Sarma is credited with helping Assam reach many important economic and cultural milestones during his tenure as cabinet minister and chief minister. As the state’s health minister when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, Sarma’s “Prepare, prepare, and overprepare” mantra and swift response, setting up treatment centers in each district before the first case was detected in the state, gained recognition. As chief minister, he launched schemes such as Orunodoi (2020) to provide monthly financial assistance to women in poor households and Swanirbhar Naari (2022) to support women weavers, as well as ways to support women who lost their husbands and children who lost their parents to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2024 construction started on the Tata Group’s semiconductor facility in Jagiroad—India’s first indigenous semiconductor assembling and testing unit—expected to create thousands of jobs and put Assam on the global semiconductor and electronics manufacturing map by 2026 with an investment of 27,000 crore rupees (about $2.9 billion) by the central government. Also in 2024 the moidams, or Ahom burial mounds, in Charaideo were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. According to Reserve Bank of India data released in 2025, Assam was the fastest-growing Indian state between financial years 2020 and 2025, with the state’s economy growing by 45 percent. In 2026 Assam debuted at the World Economic Forum, with Sarma positioning Assam as an emerging state that is a viable investment destination for semiconductors, green energy, and tourism.
The BJP won the 2026 legislative assembly election and retained power for a third consecutive term, with Sarma securing a second term as Chief Minister. Unlike the two previous state elections, the BJP won 82 seats in the 2026 election, crossing the majority mark of 64 comfortably on its own. The Congress, the BJP’s main opposition, performed poorly, winning just 19 seats, down 10 seats from the 2021 assembly elections.
Controversies
Although Sarma has been described by supporters as a dynamic leader and an efficient strategist, he is often in the news for what has been criticized as “anti-foreigner” and “anti-infiltrator” rhetoric. As someone who was associated with the Assam Agitation from a young age and was an AASU leader, Sarma has been a strong advocate of identifying and deporting migrants from Bangladesh illegally residing in Assam in a bid to protect the state’s cultural, social, and linguistic identity and heritage. His hard-line stance on alleged illegal immigration has earned him supporters as well as critics, and he has been accused of delivering hate speeches and polarizing Assamese society against the Bengali-speaking Muslim community. Defending and clarifying his stance in 2026, Sarma said:
Assam is a polarized society, for the next 30 years we have to practice politics of polarization if we want to live.…As an Assamese, I don’t want to surrender. I will fight, I will polarize. But polarization is not between Hindu and Muslim; polarization is between Assamese and Bangladeshi…We don’t fight with Assamese Muslims. We only fight with Bangladeshi Muslims.
Sarma’s political confrontations with Gaurav Gogoi, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, and All India United Democratic Front leader Badruddin Ajmal have often been in the headlines during election years. Ahead of the 2026 Assam Legislative Assembly polls, accusations and counteraccusations flew thick and fast between Sarma and Gogoi, with Sarma accusing Gogoi of being “an agent of Pakistan” and Gogoi questioning Sarma’s land acquisitions in Assam. Gogoi had also accused Sarma of “inciting genocide” over a controversial AI-generated video on the state BJP’s social media; the video was later taken down, and Sarma denied any knowledge of the video. Sarma filed a defamation case against Gogoi, after which the court passed an interim injunction against Gogoi and other Congress leaders.
Sarma was questioned by the Central Bureau of Investigation, India’s domestic crime investigation agency, in 2014 for his alleged involvement in the Saradha scam, a Ponzi scheme run by the Saradha Group. In his early political career, Sarma was also embroiled in TADA (Terrorist and Disruptive Activities [Prevention] Act, 1985; criticized by many groups for human rights violations and possible misuse and repealed after a decade) cases and the Manabendra Sharma murder case and accused of being a member of the banned United Liberation Front of Assam, but he was acquitted in all these cases.