The opinion polls in the run-up to the Assam assembly polls, beginning on Monday, have by and large mirrored the BJP's performance in the Lok Sabha polls when it won seven of the 14 seats in the State and cornered 36.86 per cent of the vote share. This was a huge jump from the Assembly elections in 2011, when the BJP was able to win barely five seats with about 11.47 per cent of the vote. The Congress lost ground in 2014, with just three seats; its vote share slid from 39.39 percent in the 2011 Assembly polls to 29.90 percent in 2014. Along with the BJP, Badruddin Ajmal's AIUDF also improved on its vote share from 12.57 per cent in the 2011 polls to 14.98 percent in 2014; it also won three Lok Sabha seats. Yet it is a tough call with the BJP's most optimistic internal surveys projecting between 48-50 seats. The AGP, according to the BJP's own estimation, is not getting more than 3-4 seats from the 24 that they are contesting. The BPF may get 7-9 seats. That takes the BJP-led alliance barely to the majority mark in Assam. On the other hand, the Congress is confident that Tarun Gogoi's undiminished popularity along with the shift in the Muslim vote and the tea tribes will give it anywhere between 60-65 seats. Opinion polls, though, have generally followed 2014 parliamentary election pattern, with the ABP News-Nielsen predicting 78 seats for the BJP-led alliance with a 44 per cent vote share, and 36 seats for the Congress with a 34 per cent vote share. The same poll predicts 10 seats for the AIUDF with a drop in the vote share to 11 per cent. Other opinion polls, such as those conducted by India TV-C Voter, give the BJP-led alliance 57 seats, Congress 44 seats, and the AIUDF 19 seats. There is no doubt that the BJP is a rising force in the State, with a presence in every constituency, but the Narendra Modi wave may be not as strong as it was in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The party has cobbled up a formidable alliance with the Bodos and the AGP and staged a coup of sorts by snatching the Congress' formidable strategist Himanta Biswa Sarma, who is now seen in almost every election rally that party president Amit Shah or Prime Minister Narendra Modi holds. It has also done well to project the soft-spoken tribal leader Sarbananda Sonowal as its chief ministerial candidate to challenge the Ahom domination of Assamese politics symbolised by Tarun Gogoi. Sarma, in fact, is confident that Gogoi may well lose his own constituency, Titabor, where the BJP has fielded Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, the tea tribe leader who was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Congress stronghold of Jorhat in 2014. "We have strategically decided to confine the Chief Minister in Titabor. Kamakhya Prasad Tasa will be a tough candidate to defeat. You will see the Congress running for cover in this election," Himanta Biswa Sarma told journalists during an interaction in Guwahati. Fielding Tasa is also sending a signal in the tea belt of Upper Assam, a traditional stronghold of the Congress. Simultaneously, the BJP is hoping that in the Barak Valley, it may benefit from Badruddin Ajmal's party eating into the Congress's minority vote share in Karimganj and Hailakandi districts. The BJP has promised to grant citizenship to illegal Hindu migrants from Bangladesh, with a Central notification regularising the entry and stay of non-Muslim refugees from Bangladesh and Pakistan. However, there are intangibles in this election which may upset the BJP's applecart. The first is a widespread disgust among the party workers at the entry of Himanta Biswa Sarma -- against whom they had not just fought legal battles but taken up issues in Parliament and on the street. Sarma's proximity with BJP president