GUWAHATI: The much talked about alliance between the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Assam has been hampered by pressure from the state RSS which is against the move alleged Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, president of Asom Gana Parishad.
In a bid to strengthen its vote bank in the Northeast, the BJP was trying to tie-up with the AGP, but the chief of the latter Mahanta remained non-committal on the possibility of an alliance between the two parties ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Mahanta said that the AGP won’t benefit if it cements an alliance with the BJP in Assam. He even claimed that the state BJP unit did not want to tie-up with his party.
In fact, the state BJP president Sarbananda Sonowal is not in favour of an alliance with the regional party. However, Mahanta and senior leaders of the party were having talks with the BJP’s central leadership.
AGP is also fiddling with the idea of joining the third front. Mahanta said that he didn’t attend the Third Front meeting in Delhi as he got the invitation very late.
Meanwhile, sources have indicated that the BJP has offered five of the 14 seats in Assam to AGP. The AGP chief reiterated that he wanted to prevent the Congress from coming to power in the upcoming general elections.
In 2009 general elections when the two parties had a tie-up, the BJP had won four seats while the AGP had managed to win only one.
Amid hectic backchannel parleys between leaders of the BJP and LJP for a pre-poll alliance in Bihar over the week, the saffron party was learnt to have begun an exercise to explore a potential pre-poll alliance with the AGP in Assam.
Sources said BJP president Rajnath Singh, in the last week, has held a meeting with former AGP president Chandramohan Patowary, who has been batting for a BJP-AGP alliance, to discuss the issue. Assam BJP chief Sonowal also met Singh to discuss the issue, sources said.
The meeting holds significance since the AGP skipped a meeting to prepare the ground for a Third Front between non-Congress and non-BJP parties in the Capital last week.
While BJP sources refrained from divulging details, the meetings suggest the BJP leadership’s active consideration of an alliance with the AGP in Assam to widen the NDA for the coming elections. Party sources have, however, revealed deep divisions within the Assam unit over forging an alliance with the AGP. This comes after the BJP forged an alliance with the LJP in Bihar.