The result of the election to the 15th Assam Legislative Assembly, which was declared on Sunday, has turned out to be quite expected. Though the Congress-led opposition alliance had till Saturday made tall claims of dislodging the ruling alliance by securing a comfortable majority, the BJP-led ruling alliance had always appeared more confident and convincing in its claim of retaining power for the second consecutive term. This is also the first time in the history of Assam that a non-Congress government has been re-elected for the second consecutive term. As was mentioned in this column on Sunday, the BJP-led alliance had won the election on several grounds. These include overall infrastructure development, bringing an end to militancy and violence, tackling corruption in recruitment for government jobs with an iron fist, taking several steps like eviction of encroachers and illegal migrants from national parks, Xatra land and other government land, to name a few. Though passing of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill had met with a lot of opposition among the Assamese people, the election result has proved that the anti-CAA sentiments did not affect the prospects of the BJP-led alliance. The poor performance of the newly-formed Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP) headed by former AASU general secretary Lurinjyoti Gogoi – which drew a solid blank – is enough to prove this. In fact Lurinjyoti Gogoi got a poor third position in both the constituencies from where he had contested. Akhil Gogoi's Raijor Dal on the other hand managed to win only one seat – Sivasagar –, and that too mostly because of the sympathy factor as Gogoi had fought the election from jail. As for the two allies of the BJP, both AGP and UPPL have done pretty well. The BJP itself was expecting the UPPL to win only five, whereas in reality it won more. Likewise, though many pundits thought that the AGP was finished especially in the backdrop of its confused stand on the CAA, the regional party did quite well, retaining most of the seats it had won in 2016. On the other side, the Congress has no other way out but to blame itself for its poor performance. The first mistake it made was to forge an alliance with Badruddin Ajmal's AIUDF. And then, the Congress also suffered from serious bickering among its senior state-level leaders. Former three-time chief minister Tarun Gogoi had in 2006 and 2011 won the hearts of the Assamese people by questioning the very credibility of Badruddin Ajmal; Gogoi knew it well that Ajmal had formed the AIUDF with the sole agenda of protecting the interests of those people (immigrants having roots in erstwhile East Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh) who had turned vulnerable after the Supreme Court of India had struck down the notorious IMDT Act on the ground that it was standing in the way of identifying the illegal migrants. Thus, Tarun Gogoi had always kept a distance from the AIUDF. But, following the demise of Tarun Gogoi, the present set of leaders – including his son Gaurav Gogoi – failed to realise the importance the late stalwarts stand against Ajmal, and forged an alliance with him with the sole intention of capturing power. The majority of voters belonging to the Assamese and other indigenous communities however could understand the grave danger of voting in favour of the Congress-led alliance of which Ajmal's AIUDF was a major partner. The BJP-AGP-UPPL alliance however took full advantage of this, and ran a campaign saying the 2021 Assam Assembly election was also about resisting the aggression against the 'xabhyata and xanskriti' – civilization and culture – of Assam. This slogan however was not used as overtly as was the slogan 'jaati-maati-bheti' during the 2016 Assembly election, but meant almost the same, with the majority of voters understanding the meaning quite explicitly. But then the sublime campaign did work towards ensuring the victory of the BJP-led alliance. And one must say that Assam has once again got a good government, particularly when the state is passing through difficult times.