Ahom Alone

It was in August 1985, that Mahanta along with his colleagues founded the Asom Gana Parishad AGP which came into power in just three months of its existence.

For Mahanta, it was jump straight from his university hostel room to the chief minister8217;s residence. At 32, he became the youngest chief minister in the country. But his first term can best be described as a disaster. The ULFA was running an almost parallel government and that finally compelled the Centre to dismiss the first AGP government a few weeks before it could complete its term.

Soon there was a split in the party with its stalwarts quitting and forming the Natun Asom Gana Parishad NAGP. The split led to the defeat of the party in the 1991 elections, but a crafty Mahanta soon quit the party president8217;s post to facilitate the return of the breakaway faction a couple of years later.

That split however left irreparable cracks in the AGP, which surfaced again when Mahanta came back to power in 1996. This time, Mahanta appeared increasingly dictatorial though he did emerge stronger as an administrator. He took on the ULFA militants, adopting the strategy KPS Gill flaunted to crush Punjab militants Gill was an Assam cadre IPS officer when Mahanta was a student leader. It was a strategy for which he attracted a lot of criticism.

The CBI, on the other hand, had almost got Mahanta for his alleged involvement in a letter of credit scandal worth Rs 200 crore but for the intervention of then governor Lt Gen Retd SK Sinha who refused permission to the investigating agency to proceed.

And as the 2001 elections approached, Mahanta dropped his Left allies and forged a last-minute alliance with the BJP. It was a calculation that went wrong. The Congress with Tarun Gogoi at its head, won.

FOR Mahanta, 52, the worst was still to come. In August 2001 when an allegation of bigamy surfaced, he found himself in real trouble. Quitting as party president, he went into hibernation naming Brindaban Goswami as his successor. While the bigamy allegation remained unproved, Mahanta slowly returned to public life and by January 2004 went ahead to contest for the post of party president when the AGP held its crucial general convention at Tezpur. He lost to Goswami by over 200 votes. And he has never really reconciled with that loss.

He countered it by criticising Goswami consistently, forcing the party to impose a ban on his public appearance outside his own constituency. Later he was also held responsible for propping up his wife as an independent candidate against the official nominee during the 2004 Lok Sabha polls.

All these irritants prompted the party to issue him a showcause notice last month. His reply was not found convincing.

After his expulsion, Mahanta has been heard talking about uniting all secular regional and national forces to defeat the Congress. Is that the beginning of a new party? 8216;8216;No, no. Let us make the AGP stronger,8217;8217; says Mahanta.

Not many are buying that line.