Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) president and former Assam Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta on Monday offered to resign from the post of party president owning moral responsibility for the regional party’s debacle in the recent elections.
The regional political party, which came into existence after the six-year long anti-foreigner movement in Assam and signing of the historical Assam Accord in 1985 between the powerful All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) leadership and the then Prime Minister late Rajiv Gandhi, had been losing its ground in the past few years.
While the party fared poorly in the recent panchayat polls across the State and even in the election to the Guwahati Municipal Council (GMC) last year, it failed to win even a single seat out of the total 14 lok Sabha seats in Assam during the lok Sabha polls held this year.
“We have fared poorly in the recent elections. I have decided to step down from the post of party president taking moral responsibility for the overall poor show,” said Mahanta while talking to newsmen on Monday in the sideline of its executive committee meeting in the party headquarters in Guwahati.
He, however, said that the party’s working president Atul Bora will take the responsibility from now on.
The AGP contested the State Assembly elections in 1985 and swept the polls by winning 67 of the 126 seats apart from capturing seven of the 14 lok Sabha (Parliament) seats, and formed the Government of Assam. The party again formed the Government in Assam after winning the elections in 1996-and in both the terms Prafulla Kumar Mahanta served as the state Chief Minister. Once a force to reckon with, the AGP however, undergone several splits in the past mainly due to differences of opinions among the ranks and files of the party.
Mahanta, however, said that he will be an MlA and continue working towards revamping the party. “There are several committed leaders in the party and we will work unitedly to strengthen it from within so that we can emerge stronger in the future,” he said.
The differences in the party ranks and files came to the fore particularly after the state assembly elections of 2011 and many of the senior party leaders, who were instrumental in forming the party in 1985, had distanced themselves from the party in last few years.
Senior party leaders like Sarbananda Sonowal, Chandra Mohan Patowary Hiten Goswami etc. had resigned from the party and joined the BJP expressing their dissatisfaction under the leadership of Prafulla Kumar Mahanta.