Perfume baron who eyed kingmaker's role fails to win his seat

The Narendra Modi juggernaut, which swept most of Assam in 2014 Lok Sabha election, has crushed the dream of billionaire perfume baron-turned- politician Maulana Badruddin Ajmal playing the role of king-maker in the Assam assembly polls.
After the assembly polls, Ajmal had asserted that no party would be able to form the next government without All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF)'s help.
But with BJP and its allies - Asom Gana Parishad and Bodoland People's Front - getting a thumping majority, Ajmal's role in government formation has diminished.
With only 13 seats, the poll result has dampened the hopes of AIUDF, which since its formation in 2005 has been able to get a considerable toehold in Muslim-dominated constituencies. The party had won 18 seats in 2011.
The poll has also made Ajmal taste personal defeat for the first time since floating AIUDF, which was formed on the anti-Congress plank after the Supreme Court scrapped the controversial Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act 1983 in 2005. Ajmal lost to Congress' Wazed Ali Choudhury by 16, 723 votes in Salmara South. "We accept the people's mandate and look to play a constructive role in the opposition," Ajmal said.
Training his guns on Congress, Ajmal blamed former CM Tarun Gogoi for AIUDF's defeat. Ajmal's resentment can be alluded to Gogoi and Congress state president Anjan Dutta dumping the AIUDF chief's proposal to have a Bihar-like grand alliance. "We tried all our best to have a grand alliance. If this grand alliance was in place, it was certain that the victory would have been for Congress and other secular parties," the AIUDF chief argued.