Do we like Himanta Biswa Sarma?
Our score: 2 out of 10. A long run of his own rhetoric aimed at Bengali-origin Muslims, with a little real good, like a shelter home for trans people, on the other side.
Sarma didn't start on the right. He won three terms as a Congress MLA and served as a minister in Tarun Gogoi's Assam government from 2006, holding health, finance and agriculture. He defected to the BJP in 2015 and became chief minister in May 2021. In 2026 he won again, with the NDA taking 102 of 126 seats and Sarma taking Jalukbari by more than 89,000 votes.
Then came the video. On 7 February the Assam BJP posted an 18-second clip of him with an air rifle, AI-generated images of two men in skullcaps and the caption “Point blank shot”. Congress leaders called it a call to genocide, and the post was deleted. In March he said it should have named Bangladeshis and that he would aim again: “Yes, one has to aim and hit the Bangladeshis. Point blank.” He called the shooting symbolic.
The courts are involved too. Petitions allege that he has made hate speech against Bengali-origin Muslims. In February 2026 a Gauhati High Court bench issued him notice and verbally said the speeches reflected a “fissiparous tendency”. In his affidavit he says quoting 'isolated lines' distorts his meaning. The court asked for full transcripts and listed the matter for 6 August; I found no ruling after that.
His facts have been questioned as well. Alt News rated false his claim that Assam's Muslim share was 14% in 1951, finding 22.6% in the census report. That doesn't settle the migration debate, which is real and contested in Assam. It does show that the numbers behind his rhetoric have not always held up.
There is good stuff to set against it, and it counts. In March 2025 he announced a dedicated shelter home in Guwahati for the transgender community, so the record has no anti-LGBTQ+ words that I found. His UCC bill bans polygamy and sets uniform divorce grounds, which supporters see as women's protection. The opposition wanted it sent to a select committee, and tribal areas are excluded.
So where do we land? A leader who builds shelters and welfare law while using language critics say is aimed at a minority is not someone this page can back. The court case is still open, he disputes the hate-speech claims, and we'll update if a ruling lands. On his own words, though, the harm test is a fail.