National

Three parties to merge with AGP

GUWAHATI: Three Assam parties have decided to merge with the Asom Gana Parishad(AGP) with the objective of going to the polls for the Lok Sabha as a united regional force to defeat the Congress and capture power in the State in 2011.

The merger of the AGP(Pragatisheel) headed by the former Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, the Trinamool Gana Parishad (TGP) and the Prabin Deka faction of the Purbanchaliya Loka Parishad(PLP) with the AGP is scheduled for October 14, its foundation day.

While the TGP and the PLP gave their consent for merger on Thursday, the AGP(Pragatisheel) conveyed its willingness during a meeting with an 11-member AGP Committee on Unification on Friday. There was some hitch over a resolution adopted at the recent AGP General House meeting, by which the party decided not to give top posts for three years to newcomers. The three parties expressed reservations about this resolution, saying it would not be win-win for them after merger. However, the AGP clarified that top posts meant only party president and Leader of the Opposition; hence the leaders of three parties would be accommodated in respectable positions.

The AGP(Pragatisheel)’s merger decision will facilitate the return of Mr. Mahanta to the parent party, of which he was founder-president. Mr. Mahanta floated his party after he was expelled from the AGP on July 3, 2005 on charges of anti-party activities. However, following the debacle of the AGP in the 2006 Assembly polls, Mahanta followers in the party pressed for unification of regional parties and for bringing leaders like him back into the AGP fold. All Assam Students Union, which gave birth to AGP in 1985, however, asked the regional parties to keep Mahanta away from unification process.

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