Crucial AGP meeting to discuss election debacle

Guwahati, Jun 5 (UNI) The central executive committee of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) will start its post-mortem of the election debacle faced by the party in the recently held Assembly election in the state.

The meeting of the powerful committee is important as most of the breakaway groups of the party, its dissident candidates of the recent election and the Asom Jatiatabadi Yuva Chhatra Parishad (AJYCP), a strong youth organisation of the state, had favoured reunification of the regional forces in the state.

A senior AGP leader today admitting the importance of the meeting said the central committee of the party would have a threadbare discussion on the unexpected election result of the party apart from other organisational matters.

'' The district presidents would have to explain the factors which led to the defeat of the party candidates in some of the strongholds of the AGP in the last assembly election, '' he said.

The AGP, which came under attack after its ''not so impressive'' performance in the election even from its own youth wing had been at the receiving end as two of its breakaway groups - the Trinamul Gana Parishad (TGP) and the Asom Gana Parishad AGP (Progressive) have also criticized the present leadership for the election debacle of the regional parties as a whole.

The Asom Yuva Parishad (AYP), the AGP's youth wing and a section of the central committee members, had already voiced their concern over the falling popularity of the party and stressed the need strengthening it with inclusion of influential people having regional bias.

A few top leaders like the Atul Bora of the TGP, who was a three-time AGP MLA and two-time Minister in AGP government, had openly accused the AGP for the defeat of the regional parties. The TGP, although had an election understanding with the AGP, drew a blank in the Assembly election.

The other breakaway group led by former Chief Minister and AGP's founder president Prafulla Kumar Mahanta also fared badly as it won only one seat contesting in over 50 constituencies. Mr Mahanta had also given a call for reunification of the regional forces after a two-day meeting of the party.

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