Assam's Lessons for AAP

It's almost a sense of deja vu. As the Aam Admi Party or AAP battles a war within, one is reminded of what happened in Assam thirty years ago. The parallels are too striking to ignore.

Like AAP that grew out of Anna's anti-corruption movement, Asom Gana Parishad or AGP was formed after the anti-foreigner's movement.

Mr Kejriwal transformed into a politician after he, as Anna's strategist, forced UPA to agree to a Lokpal or the anti-corruption law. For student leaders Prafulla Mahanta and Bhrigu Phukan, signing of the Assam Accord with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was  the turning point.

In both the movements, youth played a crucial role: AGP was the result of a students movement and AAP attracted youngsters as the freshest option to cleaner politics.

AGP was given a second chance by the people of Assam in 1996 after a very forgettable first inning (1985-90). Delhi verdict earlier this year did just that to AAP.   

The two parties are separated by a generation yet both show a common trajectory. Like the Yogendra Yadav-Prashant Bhushan saga, as soon as the AGP formed government in Assam in 1985, stories of differences between Chief Minister Prafulla Mahanta and his Home Minister, the late Bhrigu Phukan, started to surface regularly.

Every public denial would be followed up by a bigger splash of these "reported differences." The formal split in the AGP though happened much later, in 1991 after the party lost power to the Congress in the assembly elections that year.

Phukan, along with a handful of followers, formed the New AGP as an alternative. Charges against Mahanta then were similar to what one hear against AAP's leadership: he had converted a party that grew out of a mass movement into one that believes in personality cult.

Just before the 1996 assembly elections, the rivals teamed up again and asked for "forgiveness for not living up to people's expectations. Party returned to power but its problems were far from over.

Mr Phukan was made the working president of the party and Mr Mahanta became the Chief Minister for a second time. But the arrangement failed to work. The gap between the two top leaders widened and Mr Phukan was expelled from the party.

Even though Mr Mahanta led AGP completed their second term, their credibility had taken a hit. AGP was no longer the party that championed Assamese sub-nationalism nor did it rightfully articulate regional aspirations. Rather, personal ambitions and egos occupied centre-stage.

The party lost the 2001 assembly elections but more importantly, it hasn't quite recovered. Since then, the party has lost three assembly elections and fared poorly in every Lok Sabha polls. Many of the founding members of the AGP are now with the BJP, the latest challenger to Congress rule in the state for the 15 years.

In 2014's Lok Sabha polls, as the BJP secured half of the state's 14 Lok Sabha seats, AGP drew a blank and the party is not in the reckoning for the next year's assembly polls in Assam.

The political message was clear: voters had patience for a new political experiment but it wasn't infinite. As AAP brainstorms over its internal dissensions, they could perhaps take a leaf out of Assam's political history.