GUWAHATI, March 3: The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), which suffered a massive defeat at the hands of the Congress and the BJP in the 14 Lok Sabha seats with not a single candidate making it to Parliament, is heading for more trouble with the detractors of party chief Prafulla Kumar Mahanta once again beginning to revolt.Senior leader and party general secretary, Atul Bora, has already launched a tirade against Mahanta by blaming him for wrong selection of candidates, especially for the prestigious Nagaon seat.While only two of the AGP nominees have found second place in the final results from the constituencies, Mahanta's wife Jayashree Goswami Mahanta came a poor third in Nagaon. She could poll only 1,06,922 votes, against 2,67,440 of Nripen Goswami (Cong) and 2,29,606 of Rajen Gohain (BJP).Nagaon incidentally is the home town of Chief Minister Mahanta. The seat was with the AGP since 1985 when the regional party was formed.Even Birendra Prasad Baishya, minister for steel in the outgoing Gujralgovernment has come third in Mangaldoi, with Madhab Rajabanshi (Cong) winning the seat, following by Munindra Singh Lahkar (BJP) in the second spot.AGP leaders, however, have blamed the ULFA for the party's drubbing in the hustings, apart from complaining that the Centre and the Election Commission refused to ensure security to the voters. The ULFA had called a boycott of the polls, which the Assamese-speaking population in the Brahmaputra Valley abided by leading to large-scale abstinence of the AGP supporters from casting their votes.The AGP however refuses to accept the fact that a sizeable number of the party's supporters who did come out to vote despite the ULFA boycott call cast their votes in favour of the BJP.This has been proved by the significant improvement of the BJP in all the seats, with its nominees coming second in as many as eight seats and winning in one.The BJP, which had polled 9.6 per cent votes in Assam in the 1991 Lok Sabha elections, had improved to 15.92 per cent in 1996.This is likely to go up to more than 20 per cent this time. Detailed break-up of all the constituencies are yet to come. The break-away Asom Jatiya Sanmilani, floated by Mahanta's friend-turned-foe Bhrigu Kumar Phukan, has also cut into the AGP's vote base, though not in a big manner.
