Mahanta in no mood to quit from party leadership

Guwahati, June 4: The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) may have tasted a humiliating defeat in the last Lok Sabha polls, and there may be a growing demand within the party for its chief Prafulla Kumar Mahanta’s resignation, but it seems the party leader is in no mood to relent.

While talking to mediapersons in a press conference in the city, Mahanta stated that people may keep demanding for him to resign from the post of party president, but he feels that these are just passive disturbances and there are better things to concentrate on. The wave of protest against Mahanta’s leadership came to limelight when the party’s Secretary Manoj Kumar Bora resigned after alleging harassment by Mahanta over the issue. The AGP chief casually stated that the demand for a change in the leadership may arise after the party’s defeat, but it does not means that he should resign just for the sake of it.

Mahanta also said that an alliance with the BJP could not happen due to the spoilsport played by the saffron party’s state unit. Mahanta stated that there had been propaganda in the media that the alliance could not come through because of some leaders from the AGP who were uncooperative. He stated in this regard that it was nothing to do with AGP leaders, but it was the state unit of the BJP which had created barriers for the alliance to be formed. He also stated that the party had held talks with the NDA leadership include BJP party president and current Home Minister, Rajnath Singh. He added that talks were even held with TDP’s Chandrababu Naidu but the attitude of the BJP’s Assam leaders could not let things materialize.

Regarding the wave of migration of AGP leaders to the BJP fold, Mahanta stated that such migrations keep happening from time to time and it is nothing that should worry the party’s prospects for the Assembly Elections in 2016. Mahanta added that many new people are joining the party and he is looking to forming a new breed of party cadres with this infusion of fresh young blood.

While the recent Lok Sabha polls defeat seems to have had no effect on Mahanta, he appeared all determined to set his goals for the assembly polls two years later and is already toying the idea of a pre–poll plan for setting the goal right. Mahanta stated that the party is concentrating on elections for 93 town committees and 33 municipalities in the state that are scheduled to take place before the next assembly polls. As per Mahanta, it is very important for the party to perform well in these contests to be able to garner public support for the assembly battle.

(Source) The Sentinel Assam — The Largest Media group of North-East India — focused on news publishing. Combined circulation of the group is over 120,000 newspapers per day, making it the largest newspaper group in the region. The Sentinel is the only English daily in the Northeast India with five editions published simultaneously from Guwahati, Dibrugarh, Shillong, Silchar and Itanagar. For all local, news from Assam, national and international news please visit http://www.sentinelassam.com/