The numbers game in Assam

The ruling Asom Gana Parishad is seriously divided following dissidents' demands for the replacement of Prafulla Kumar Mahanta as Chief Minister.

BARUN DAS GUPTA
in Guwahati

THE Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) Government in Assam is facing a serious crisis that threatens its very survival, following the intensification of a campaign by dissidents in the ruling party who want Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta replaced.

The campaign is led by former Public Works Minister Atul Bora, who nurses ambitions of becoming Chief Minister. Late last year, he stated in an interview to a Guwahati daily that he had the competence to be Chief Minister and would not shirk that responsibility if he was called upon to take it up. He also alleged that Mahanta was involved in the Rs.200-crore letter of credit (LoC) scam (Frontline, January 23, 1998).

With the marginalisation and eventual suspension from the party of former Home Minister Bhrigu Phukan, who too carried on a campaign against Mahanta, Bora emerged as the Chief Minister's principal political rival. Mahanta's decision to field his wife Jayasree as the AGP candidate in the Nagaon constituency for the Lok Sabha election in February was resented by his colleagues in the party and Government. Bora was one of those who opposed her nomination, and when she finished third he stepped up his campaign to replace Mahanta.

V. SUDERSHAN
Chief Minister P.K. Mahanta.

The dissidence intensified on May 15, when Bora flew to Delhi with Phukan. Mahanta was kept informed of Bora's movements in Delhi, but precisely what Phukan did there is not known.

The Mahanta group claims that it has documents to prove that the hire charges for the car used by Bora in Delhi were paid by Rajendra Prasad Bora, the prime accused in the LoC scam case who is now allegedly trying to get Mahanta charge-sheeted in the case.

Mahanta's aides also claimed that in Delhi Bora contacted officers of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is investigating the LoC, and that Bora was accompanied by an advocate who had filed a public interest petition in the Guwahati High Court urging it to direct the CBI not to delay the submission of its final report in the case. Incidentally, the lawyer had contested the Lok Sabha election as an independent backed by the Asom Jatiya Sammilan, the party floated by Phukan (even when he was still in the AGP); the lawyer forfeited his security deposit.

On May 16, when Bora was still in Delhi, Mahanta effected a reshuffle of his Council of Ministers. Bora was shifted from the Public Works Ministry to the Forest Ministry, while Jatin Mali, another of Mahanta's detractors who is considered close to Bora, was divested of the Elementary and Secondary Education portfolio and given the Higher Education portfolio, which was earlier held by Thaneswar Boro. Boro was in turn given the portfolio that Mali held earlier. There were some other minor changes as well. Significantly, Mahanta said that he would soon expand his Ministry. It was evidently a move to check dissidence.

Bora, who returned from Delhi on May 18, announced that he would resign from the Ministry because Mahanta had "insulted and humiliated" him by changing his portfolio in the name of a ministerial reshuffle.

Posters denouncing Mahanta were prominently displayed at the press conference at Bora's official residence. Present alongside Bora were Jatin Mali, some MLAs and former Ministers, and Transport Minister Pradeep Hazarika. (Hazarika, who was charge-sheeted by the CBI on May 19 in a case of alleged murder in 1981, was dropped from the Ministry. He was charged under sections of the Explosive Substances Act and the Arms Act in connection with the killing of Upper Assam Commissioner E.S. Parthasarathy in April 1981. Parthasarathy was killed in a bomb blast in his office in Jorhat; Hazarika and seven others who were charge-sheeted appeared before the court of the District and Sessions Judge, Shillong, and pleaded not guilty.)

At the press conference, Bora and Mali declared that the battle for Mahanta's ouster had begun. The next day, Mahanta sacked Mali.

Then followed a series of claims and counter-claims about the legislative strength of the two factions: Bora claimed that he had the support of 21 of the 63 AGP MLAs (or one-third, the minimum number required for a "split" to be recognised). The Mahanta camp asserted that Mahanta continued to enjoy a majority.

It soon became clear that not all the dissidents were willing to accept Bora as the alternative to Mahanta. Phukan, for instance, was willing to join hands with Bora to secure Mahanta's ouster, but neither he nor his associate, former Education Minister Brindaban Goswami, was prepared to accept Bora as Chief Minister.

S. PATRONOBISH
Former Minister Atul Bora.

Then began the search for another leader. On May 23, Bora, Phukan, Goswami and former Speaker Pulakesh Barua announced that none of them was a claimant for the leadership and that the name of their leader would be announced soon. They also said that they were not in favour of splitting the party and would not take any help from "outside" - an obvious reference to the Congress(I) - to form a new government.

Two days later, Bora announced that Thaneswar Boro was their leader, but no confirmation of this came from Boro himself. He was away from Guwahati and could not be contacted. On May 26, Boro said that if a new leader of the AGP Legislature Party was to be elected and if his name was proposed, he was prepared to take up the leadership. Earlier, he held two rounds of discussions with Mahanta, at which chief whip Hiten Goswami, himself a critic of Mahanta, was present.

However, both Boro and Goswami criticised Bora for having gone public with the demand for a leadership change and for having named Boro the new leader. Boro said that these were internal matters of the party and should have been decided at the Legislature Party meeting and not aired in the media.

Goswami went a step further. Referring to Bora's claim that he had the support of one-third of the party MLAs, he said that this evidently pointed to an intention to split the party - which, as the party's Chief Whip, he would not support. His interest, he said, was in maintaining party unity.

Goswami further claimed that there was no "dissidence" in the party: those who wanted a change of leadership could not be branded dissidents, he said. "In a democratic party anybody can demand a change of leadership. Does it amount to dissidence?" he asked.

It is not clear whether Boro's offer to take up the leadership was made with Mahanta's consent and concurrence. Boro is known to be one of Mahanta's most loyal ministerial colleagues. A few months ago, when there was speculation that Mahanta might have to step down if the Governor gave his sanction for the CBI to prosecute him in the LoC case, the AGP informally decided that Boro would succeed Mahanta in such an eventuality. A non-controversial man untainted by corruption charges, he alone could be trusted to vacate the chair if Mahanta was acquitted and he wanted to take over the leadership again.

On May 26, however, Boro resigned from the Mahanta Ministry. In a letter addressed to Mahanta, Boro said that he was resigning in the interest of party unity. In conversations with party colleagues earlier in the day, Boro is believed to have expressed "disgust" at the factionalism in the AGP. Guwahati newspapers reported that they had received a statement, purportedly faxed by Boro, in which he expressed "full confidence" in Mahanta's leadership and denied that he had had any secret meetings with Phukan. In the statement, Boro further said that he had never indulged in "dissident politics" and would "never become the leader of the dissidents."

THE crisis in the AGP, however, is unlikely to be resolved by a change of leadership. Two things seem certain: even if someone replaces Mahanta, the new government will not last long, and if the faction feuds lead to fresh Assembly elections, the AGP will fare badly, as the people will conclude that AGP leaders learnt nothing from their experience during their first stint in power (1985-90) which was marked by serious rifts in the party.

S. PATRONOBISH
Bhrigu Phukan.

Anyone who replaces Mahanta as Chief Minister will also have to reckon with Atul Bora, whose temperament has not won him much popularity within the party and who will be waiting to make his moves. He is unlikely to forget that Phukan had a role in his expulsion from the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP) when it was leading the anti-foreigner movement in the 1980s. He joined the AGP only when it was about to sweep the polls.

Nor is Phukan likely to forget that it was at Atul Bora's instance that he was divested, one by one, of most of the important portfolios he held in the first AGP Government, and that almost every policy course including the one relating to the Bodo problem, that he initiated as Home Minister, was opposed by Bora. Bora had bitterly criticised Phukan when the latter broke away from the AGP to float the Natun AGP on the eve of the 1991 Assembly elections.

Meanwhile, the uncertainty about the future of the Government is beginning to show on the administration. Leaders of the alliance partners of the AGP - the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and the UPPA - met Mahanta on May 25 and urged him to settle his inner-party problems quickly in the interest of the State. They suggested that Mahanta hold a meeting of his Legislature Party, if necessary. Mahanta reportedly agreed to do so, but such a meeting can be held only after the byelections to two Assembly seats, scheduled for June 3.

The two major Opposition parties, the Congress(I) and the Bharatiya Janata Party, find themselves unable to make political capital out of the crisis in the AGP. The Congress(I) knows that no AGP faction is likely to take its help in forming a government as such a move would be highly unpopular. The BJP is opposed to the idea of destabilising the Mahanta Government or imposing President's rule at the moment because it believes that in a mid-term election to the Assembly, the Congress(I) is better placed to come to power. A State leader of the BJP told Frontline that the party wanted time to consolidate its position at the Centre and extend its support base in the country as a whole; the party also believes that the longer Mahanta stays in power, the more he will suffer the disadvantages of incumbency. But developments within the AGP may not go strictly according to the BJP's scheme of things.

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