lok-sabha-elections

Updated: Mar 06, 2019 18:35 IST

Two months after it walked out of the alliance with the BJP, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) is looking to contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls alone, a senior leader said.

Ramendra Narayan Kalita, the party general secretary, ruled out an alliance with the Congress and said the “decision for an alliance with the BJP has not yet been taken.”

The AGP had earlier announced the formation of a nine-member committee to chart out plans for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

“The nine-member committee will decide on the question of alliance,” Kalita said. “The BJP leadership from Delhi has been in touch,” he claimed. Senior BJP leader and Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, when asked of the likelihood of an alliance with the AGP or the Delhi leadership being in touch, however, responded that he was “not aware”.

Another senior party leader in the region had earlier said the BJP’s state unit was opposed to an alliance with the AGP.

The AGP had pulled out of the alliance with the BJP in January right before the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill (CAB) was passed in Lok Sabha. The party had said the Bill violated the Assam Accord of 1985 and would nullify the ongoing process of updating of the National Register of Citizens.

Kalita said the party is now moving to finalise its Lok Sabha plans. “The nine-member committee will be meeting several district committees in the coming days,” he said.

According to Kalita, the AGP is looking to contest 10 of the 14 Lok Sabha seats. “We may not contest, Silchar and Karimganj in Barak Valley, and Kokrajhar and Karbi Anglong seats where the organisation is weak,” he said adding some of the names of the candidates are almost final and that the list will be a mix of new and old faces.

Kalita, meanwhile, accepted that the party is short on funds and cannot match the Congress and the BJP.

The AGP did not win any seat in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and secured a vote share of just 4 per cent. In the 2009 polls, which it contested in an alliance with the BJP, it won one seat.

During his last visit to Assam, BJP president Amit Shah, while addressing party workers in Lakhimpur, had said the BJP was committed to bring the CAB even as he reminded the AGP how it could not win anything when it contested on its own.