Guwahati, April 26 NNN : Eleven years after he exited unceremoniously and had to subsequently leave the party, former Assam chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta was re-elected president of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) today. He defeated legislator Padma Hazarika.
Two months after he became the AGP’s founder president in 1985, Mahanta became India’s youngest chief minister. He was president of the party for as many years as he was chief minister over two terms from 1985-1990 and 1996-2001.
The election to the post of AGP president was held throughout the day. Of the 395 members in the party’s
general council, five abstained while an equal number of votes were cancelled. The final result read 212 in favour of Mahanta, 39 more than what Hazarika mustered.
“The party has not only reposed faith in me, it has also given me the huge responsibility of making AGP the force it once was,” said Mahanta, 57, after being declared winner. He takes over from incumbent Chandra Mohan Patowary.
Nothing had been going right for the AGP since its electoral debacle in 2001. Many in the party blamed Mahanta’s alleged extramarital affair with a government employee as well as the ‘secret killings’ (term for allegedly using government machinery to eliminate kin of United Liberation Front of Asom rebels) during his reign for the loss. Mahanta had to step down as president in August 2001. He laid low until August 2005 when his party membership was terminated. Two months later, he formed the rebel AGP (Progressive) party and dented the AGP’s chances of returning to power in the 2006 assembly election.
Mahanta’s party merged with the AGP in October 2008 but it wasn’t enough to revive the party’s fortunes.
It went down to the Congress for the third straight term in 2011, and this time it even lost the status of Opposition party.
“The issue of secret killings was a Congress conspiracy, and it had been raising it prior to the party election because it is scared of me leading the AGP,” Mahanta said.
Read more / Original news source: http://manipur-mail.com/prafulla-mahanta-elected-agp-chief/
