India, May 1 -- Allegations that "traitors" are sabotaging the prospects of some of its candidates have rattled the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of the May 4 assembly election vote counting, prompting the state party chief Dilip Saikia to urge his colleagues to refrain from commenting on likely saboteurs.

On April 25, former BJP state chief Ranjeet Kumar Dass, a minister in the outgoing Cabinet, posted on Facebook that he did not fight the communists alone but battled some "camouflaged traitors" acting as their own. A day later, Dass referred to the 19th-century defeat of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and posted, "I am not Napoleon from [the] Battle of Waterloo, I am Ranjeet from the Waterloo of the Bhawanipur-Sorbhog co...