Guwahati, April 6: Assam Finance Minister and senior BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday said that the NDA will win 22 out of the 40 seats in the third phase of the state’s Assembly elections.

“In the third phase election out of 40 seats BJP and its alliance will get 22 seats,” said Sarma after casting his vote at Amingaon Bengali High school on Tuesday.

Sarma is also on the fray from his constituency Jalukbari where he has been victorious four consecutive terms. He went to vote along with his son Nandil, a first-time voter and wife and entrepreneur Riniki Bhuyan.

The seat projection by Sarma, who is the main strategist for the BJP-led alliance consisting of Asom Gana Parishad and United People’s Party Liberal (UPPL) this elections, is one seat short of what it was in the last term in 2016. The BJP had won 11 seats while the AGP came out victorious in four and the then ally BPF clinched eight out of the eight seats in the Bodoland territorial Region (BTR) that are in the fray in the third term.

This year, however, the BJP gave the eight BTR constituency to UPPL that, after doing considerably well in the autonomous council elections in December 2020, is contesting the Assembly elections for the first time. BJP has fielded 20 for their own candidate and 13 to AGP.

The Chhar areas and those skirting the India-Bangladesh borders in western Assam that are in the fray in the third phase are also strongholds of the All India United Democratic Front and the Congress, who are stitched into an alliance.

The update of NRC in 2019 has left more than 19 lakh people from those areas, inhabited mostly by Bengali speaking Muslims, who are often tagged as “immigrant infiltrators”, and the Hindu Bengalis who are staring at citizenship being stripped off may also go against the BJP.

Sarma talking to the media after casting his vote, further projected that the BJP-led alliance in Assam will win 87 seats which is 13 seats shy of its pre-poll target of 100 seats out of the 126 seats in the Assam Assembly.

“NDA will win 87 seats in the Assam election this time. In the first phase, we will get 40 of 47 seats, we will get 25 of the 39 seats in the second phase and 22 of 39 in the third phase,” Sarma predicted.

A party needs the support of 64 legislators to form government in Assam Assembly.