Payback time for BJP in AGP’s quest for Parliament seats
The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) was the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) stepping stone to power in Assam. More than two decades later, it is payback time for the latter in the regional party’s quest for a berth in Parliament.
The AGP’s last Lok Sabha member was Joseph Toppo, who won the Sonitpur (now Tezpur) constituency in 2009.
The BJP tasted success in its rst Assembly election in Assam in 1991, winning 10 seats, nine of which were from the Bengali-dominated Barak Valley. But the party’s graph started dipping until the Prafulla Mahanta-led AGP struck a partnership ahead of the 2001 State elections.
The 2001 State elections were a disaster for the AGP but it gave the BJP a toehold in the Assamese-dominated Brahmaputra Valley.
The alliance, broken after the AGP’s electoral debacle that year, was forged again ahead of the 2016 State polls, which the two parties won along with the now-discarded Bodoland People’s Front.
Defeat in alloted seats
As the minor partner of the BJP since, the AGP was in 2019 allotted three Lok Sabha seats — Barpeta, Dhubri, and Kaliabor — which the BJP was reportedly uncomfortable with because of a high percentage of Muslim voters.
The Congress won the Barpeta and Kaliabor seats, while the All India United Democratic Front retained Dhubri in 2019. After delimitation in 2023, Kaliabor ceased to exist and a reshaped Barpeta now has less than 40% Muslim voters compared with more than 60% ve years ago. Dhubri, on the other hand, was saddled with more Muslim voters than the 73% it had in 2019.
“The AGP did not get winnable seats in the earlier elections. But the situation has changed and BJP workers have been told to back the two AGP candidates fully,” Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said in March.
The two AGP candidates are former Minister Phani Bhushan Choudhury in Barpeta, and Zabed Islam in Dhubri.
AGP president Atul Bora attributed the optimism within his party to the camaraderie with the BJP.