Headline numbers mask AGP’s steady slide despite 10 years in power

While an upstart calved successful the aftermath of the anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act protests manages to clasp its ain against the main Opposition party, the 1 synonymous with regionalism successful Assam is successful terminal diminution adjacent aft enjoying the perks of powerfulness for the past decade.

The Raijor Dal, with enactment main Akhil Gogoi its sole MLA successful the outgoing Assembly and that excessively arsenic an Independent contesting from jail, has managed to wrangle 11 seats from the Congress aft calling disconnected confederation talks and announcing candidates for 13 seats.

The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), BJP’s inferior spouse successful the ruling National Democratic Alliance, has been fixed 26 seats. The header fig remains intact from the past predetermination successful 2021 – the enactment contested the aforesaid fig of seats and won 9 – but it’s the constituencies AGP has been relegated to that betrays the dependable descent and dwindling bargaining chips vis-a-vis- its elder partner.

Party president and Minister Atul Bora keeps his Bokakhat constituency and Cabinet workfellow Keshab Mahanta has been renominated from Kaliabor. Diptimayee Choudhury, the woman of enactment elder Phani Bhushan Choudhury, who present represents Barpeta successful the Lok Sabha aft serving 8 consecutive presumption arsenic MLA from Bongaigaon, has been renominated. Prithviraj Rabha volition support his Tezpur spot portion Prodip Hazarika has been shifted to Sivasagar from Amguri owed to delimitation.

These are possibly the lone hurrahs for the determination outfit that was forged successful the crucible of the Assam Agitation, swept to powerfulness successful the mid-1980s, and secured different word successful authorities a decennary later. Thirteen of the AGP’s candidates this clip are from the number community, the highest proportionality among parties barring Badruddin Ajmal’s All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF).

While Mr. Bora explained it distant arsenic winnability arithmetic and “local dynamics”, the plain information is that the BJP, which named nary Muslim campaigner among its 89, has saddled its state with the bulk of the post-delimitation constituencies with dense number concentration.

Local dynamics tin scarcely explicate the dropping of AGP seasoned and enactment wide caput Ramendra Narayan Kalita, a five-time MLA from Guwahati West constituency, ostensibly connected the crushed that his constituency is simply a delimitation casualty. He could person been fielded from the caller Guwahati Central seat, which subsumes segments of the abolished spot – instead, the BJP has named Vijay Kumar Gupta.

Tensions had been brewing astatine the grassroots successful respective constituencies wherever section leaders and workers of the AGP fancied the determination party’s chances. The request was astir vociferous successful Dergaon and Khumtai successful Golaghat district, and Barhampur successful Nagaon district; the incumbent legislator successful Dergaon is from AGP, and Barhampur – a spot with nostalgic worth for having doubly elected erstwhile Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta – had been ceded to the BJP lone successful 2021. The AGP gets to contention nary of the 3 this clip round.

The diminishing conjugation returns for the AGP vis-a-vis BJP with respect to spot organisation comes connected the backmost of akin heartburn successful the run-up to the 2021 election.

Back then, the determination enactment contested 26 seats and won nine, but respective constituencies historically associated with it – including Patacharkuchi (now Bajali), Kamalpur, Lakhimpur and Naharkatiya, isolated from Barhampur – were wrested by the BJP.

The large flip

The AGP, past the incumbent enactment successful power, archetypal allied with the BJP successful the 2001 Assembly predetermination that heralded an uninterrupted 15-year Congress regularisation nether existent Assam main Gaurav Gogoi’s begetter Tarun Gogoi. The enactment mislaid power, shedding 39 seats from its 1996 tally of 59, portion its inferior state added an adjacent fig of seats to its erstwhile tally of four. By the clip the 2016 Assembly predetermination came round, the BJP emerged arsenic the single-largest enactment with 60 MLAs portion AGP won 14 seats.

It’s not inconceivable that the now-junior state could inactive lucifer the triumph number from the 2021 poll, a imaginable burnished by the introduction of 2 incumbent MLAs from the Barak Valley from the AIUDF and the BJP’s vote-transfer heft aft 2 presumption successful power. But the elder and inferior tags person flipped irreversibly, and inferior is perpetually losing ground.