Double blow for BJP in Assam

By Barun Das Gupta

GUWAHATI, MAY 14. The election result in Assam is both a defeat and a victory for the Asom Gana Parishad supremo and outgoing Chief Minister, Mr. Prafulla Kumar Mahanta.

Mr. Mahanta may have lost power but he has also finished a national party, BJP, which was threatening to take away large chunks of the AGP's traditional support base - the caste Hindus of the Brahmaputra Valley. The AGP's eve-of-the-poll tie-up with the BJP effectively sealed the alliance's fate.

The alliance has harmed both parties, but the harm is much more to the BJP. Even the Bengali voters in the Brahmaputra and Barak Valleys, expected to vote for the BJP, did not take its alliance with the AGP kindly, and instead, voted for the Congress.

In the pervading gloom of the nearly-deserted AGP office, the few party workers and functionaries present do not conceal their glee at the total rout of the BJP. ``This was our leader's masterstroke to finish off the BJP,'' they say.

The first result of the alliance was a vertical split in the State BJP, with former vice-president, Mr. Hiranya Bhattacharya, forming the break-away Asom BJP.

The acrimonious mutual accusations that the leaders and workers of both parties indulged in during the campaigning - each blaming the other for non-cooperation - also confused the voters. They wondered how the two parties, which were not helping each other even during the elections, could provide a stable government. This confusion drove many of them to vote for the Congress. On May 8, last day of the campaigning, the State BJP president, Mr. Rajen Gohain, told reporters ``informally'' that the poor turnout at the Prime Minister's meeting in Guwahati on May 5 was due to ``deliberate sabotage'' by the AGP.

He also said the two parties together would ``at best'' win 40 seats. The next day, Mr. Gohain not only denied what he had said but blamed the press for ``hatching a conspiracy'' against the alliance.

The denial, however, cut no ice with the voters as on the polling day Mrs. Bijoya Chakravarty, Union Minister of State for Water Resources, told a private TV channel that the AGP had used money meant for the welfare of the people to ``buy voters and even officers''. Since this was on camera, she could not deny it.

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Section  : State Elections
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