Asom Gana Parishad

Asom Gana Parishad ( AGP , Assamese অসম গণ পৰিষদ , "Association of the Assamese People") is a regional political party in the Indian state of Assam .

Party history

The beginnings of AGP lie in the " Assam Movement " ( Assam Movement ) from 1979 to 1985. This protest movement, which was mainly supported by student organizations such as the All Assam Students Union (AASU), was directed against the strong immigration of mostly Muslim Bengali from neighboring Bangladesh to Assam. In addition, the Indian central government called for greater consideration of the local interests of Assam. The politically dominant Congress Party was accused of not doing enough against immigration, since the immigrants, as Muslims, were potential voters of the Congress Party. The Assamese feared that they would become a minority in their own country through immigration. The spokesmen of the Assam movement demanded the registration and deportation of all illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. From 1979, during a period of internal instability in India, the protests intensified and in some cases paralyzed public order in Assam. Most of the protests were non-violent, but there were also some open acts of violence against Muslims. In the so-called Nellie massacre on February 18, 1983 in Nagaon district in the run-up to the parliamentary elections in Assam in 1983, more than 2,000 Muslim Bengalis were killed. The parliamentary elections were boycotted by the supporters of the Assam movement, who initially demanded the removal of illegal immigrants from Assam's electoral register, so that the turnout was only 33%.

After lengthy negotiations between the Indian central government and representatives of the Assam movement, the so-called was on August 15, 1985 Assam Agreement ( Assam accord ) completed. The agreement stipulated that all people who had immigrated to Assam from Bangladesh since March 1971 should be identified and deported and that all Bangladeshi immigrants between January 1966 and March 1971 should be removed from the Assam electoral roll. After the conclusion of the agreement, new elections were called for the parliament of Assam. At a national meeting in Golaghat on October 13 and 14, 1985, the leaders of the Assam movement decided to found a political party, which took place on October 14. Prafulla Kumar Mahanta , the previous leader of the AASU, was elected President of the newly established Asom Gana Parishad (AGP). In the election to the Parliament of Assam in December 1985, the AGP won 67 of the 126 seats and then established the Assam government from 1985 to 1991 with Mahanta as Chief Minister . At the national level, she became a member of the Janata Dal- led National Front in 1989 and was represented in the cabinet of Prime Minister VP Singh in 1989/90 . From 1996 to 2001 the AGP again established the government of Assam with Mahanta as Chief Minister and was involved in the coalition governments of Deve Gowda and Indian Kumar Gujral at the all-Indian level . Before the 2009 general election , the AGP signed an election campaign agreement with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but refused to formally join the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance . In the parliamentary elections in Assam in 2011 and the all-India election in 2014 , the AGP and BJP went their separate ways again. For some years the political weight of the AGP has steadily decreased and the party has also been weakened by splinter groups and the defection of dissidents to other parties (especially the BJP). Today AGP is one of the smaller parties in Assam.

From 2016 to 2019 the AGP was involved in a coalition government under Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal (BJP) in Assam. Due to disagreements over the amendment to the Citizenship Bill 2016 , AGP withdrew from the coalition and government with the BJP on January 7, 2019. The law, supported by the BJP, would have made it easier for non-Muslim immigrants to be naturalized, while the AGP insisted on the expulsion of all illegal immigrants in accordance with the provisions of the Assam Agreement.

Election results

The following table shows the election results (seats won) in the all-India parliamentary elections and the elections to the Parliament of Assam. Assam elects 14 MPs for the Lok Sabha and the Assamese Parliament has 126 MPs. Assam did not take part in the 1984 Lok Sabha election. The election in Assam took place a year later. In 1989 Assam did not take part in the all- India parliamentary elections.

year	choice	voting share	Seats in parliament
1985	Elected Lok Sabha in Assam 1985	-	7/542
1985	General election in Assam 1985	-	67/126
1991	Election for Lok Sabha in 1991	0.54%	1/521
1991	Parliamentary election in Assam 1991	17.9%	19/126
1996	General election in Assam 1996	29.7%	59/126
1996	Elected Lok Sabha 1996	0.76%	5/543
1998	Election for Lok Sabha in 1998	0.29%	0/543
1999	Election for Lok Sabha 1999	0.32%	0/543
2001	Parliamentary election in Assam 2001	20.0%	20/126
2004	Election for Lok Sabha 2004	0.53%	2/543
2006	Parliamentary election in Assam 2006	20.4%	24/126
2009	Election for Lok Sabha 2009	0.43%	1/543
2011	Parliamentary election in Assam 2011	16.3%	10/126
2014	Election for Lok Sabha 2014	0.1%	0/543
2016	Parliamentary election in Assam 2016	8.1%	14/126

Web links

• Asom Gana Parishad's website (English / Assamese)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Nandana Dutta: Questions of Identity of Assam: Location, Migration, Hybridity. SAGE Publications 2012, ISBN 8132105117 .
2. ↑ ASOM GANA PARISHAD (AGP): HISTORY & ORIGIN. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on June 3, 2016 ; accessed on June 3, 2016 (English, self-presentation on the AGP website). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ Part II: The Assam Gazette, June 23, 1999 313. (pdf) (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved January 11, 2015 (English, text of the Assam Accord). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ Asom Gana Parishad not part of NDA despite poll tie-up with BJP. March 9, 2009, accessed January 11, 2015 . 
5. ^ AGP: tie-up limited to seat-sharing with BJP assam. The Hindu, March 10, 2009, accessed January 11, 2015 . 
6. ^ Assam: AGP-BJP alliance could have defeated Congress. May 11, 2011, accessed January 11, 2015 . 
7. ↑ Assam poll tracker: Big lead for Congress, BJP and AGP way behind. IBNlive, April 1, 2014, accessed on January 11, 2015 . 
8. ↑ BJP loses another ally: Asom Gana Parishad quits NDA over Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, having threatened to do so in past. firstpost.com, January 7, 2019, accessed February 19, 2019 . 
9. ^ Election Results - Full Statistical Reports. Indian Election Commission, accessed on January 11, 2015 (English, election results of all Indian elections to the Lok Sabha and the parliaments of the states since independence). 
10. ↑ ^{a b} Since the AGP party was only founded shortly before the election, the AGP candidates were officially counted as "independents" by the Indian Electoral Commission. Therefore, the AGP's share of the vote cannot be precisely determined