AGP, the elephant in the room

The BJP’s rainbow alliance perhaps would not have looked so complete until the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) joined it. The AGP coming onboard has given far more acceptability to the BJP’s call for creation of government in Assam that will look at the rights of the indigenous people and drive away the illegal migrants. Had the regional party preferred to go alone, no one would have put their money on it. But allying with the BJP might help it regain lost ground.

The AGP was once considered a front-runner among the regional political forces in the country. However, post its defeat in the 2001 Assembly polls, the AGP has only seen downfall. Perhaps, the 2016 Assembly polls is the its last chance to revive its political fortunes.

The tallest leader of the party and two-time Assam chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta was once revered in the state. In fact, Mahanta burst into the political scene in Assam and took the entire state along with him when he, along with a dozen young student leaders of the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), led a widespread anti-foreigner agitation.

The Assam Agitation of the 1980s saw the rise of the popular Assamese nationalist dem-and of “Assam for the Assamese”. The Centre had to give in to the demands following which the historic Assam Accord was signed in 1985.

The support for Mahanta was such that he created history by being the only person in India to become a chief minister directly from a student leader without any political experience in between. People of Assam put their faith on the elephant, the symbol of the AGP.

Nationally, larger parties like the BJP and the Congress have had to give space and forge alliance with regional and smaller parties to form a government at the Centre. In the normal course, the AGP would have been a larger national player, but it went into a tailspin right from the time it rose to power for miserably failing to meet the people’s expectations.

The downfall

While the state’s economy crumbled and unemployment rose, the United Liberation Front of Assam (Ulfa) added to its horror. A spell of insurgency and counterinsurgency began and the poor were caught in the crossfire. Assam felt highly let down by Mahanta and his team, and the Congress returned to power with veteran Hiteshwar Saikia at the helm.
 
Between 1998 and 2001, during Mahanta’s second term, Assam witnessed the ugliest chapter of its political history. Violence became the order of the day; unidentified gunmen would knock on the doors of the families of Ulfa and former Ulfa rebels, and kill them in cold blood at night. These came to be known as secret killings. A 2007 inquiry report tabled in the state Legislative Assembly questioned Mahanta’s role in the incidents.

The people of Assam were frustrated, and in 2001, the Congress was brought back to power under the leadership of Tarun Gogoi. What followed next was a complete free fall of the AGP. In every subsequent election, from civic bodies to the Lok Sabha, the party has only seen decline everywhere. In 2011 Assembly polls, the AGP could manage only 10 seats.

The party’s anti-foreigner plank remains, as the issue of ‘illegal influx from Bangladesh’ is still the mainstay of political discourse in the tea-rich state. But the AGP’s is the feeblest voice now. The vacuum created by the party’s incompetence has led to a sharp division of votes in Assam, thereby helping the Congress.

The BJP, for the last 10 years, has been trying to find ground in this vacuum. Today, half of its top Assam leaders are AGP products. If the AGP can ride the wave the BJP is trying to create in Assam, it has chances of survival. It remains to be seen, however, whether this survival is at the cost of the regionalism that the AGP’s elephant once stood for as the party embraces the rhetoric of nationalism.