Party members congratulate newly elected AGP president Chandramohan Patowary on Sunday. Picture by Eastern Projections

Guwahati, Sept. 21: The AGP today unanimously elected leader of the Opposition Chandramohan Patowary as its president, “dislodging” present incumbent Brindaban Goswami minutes after the party cleared the decks for the return of its breakaway leaders, including former chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta.

An angry Goswami walked out of the general body meeting, after a no-confidence motion was moved against the current executive committee headed by him.

The body had endorsed the recommendation of the central executive for the unification of all the offshoots of the AGP. Supporting the motion moved by AGP youth wing president Keshab Mahanta, working president Phani Bhusan Choudhury resigned after expressing his dissatisfaction over the way the party was run in the past year.

Leaders like Durga Das Boro, Padma Hazarika, Girindra Kumar Baruah and others supported Choudhury.

Replying to the no-confidence motion against him, Goswami made a veiled attack on the unification process, lamenting that the person who was responsible for the “secret killings” had suddenly become endeared to his party colleagues.

“You can convey to every household in the state that Brindaban Goswami was harmful to the party and the state and Mahanta is good... Since I am bad, I am leaving this meeting and resigning from the presidentship,” Goswami said, before leaving the meeting in a huff.

Coming out of the meeting, he told reporters that he was pained by the way his colleagues had turned against him and hence, he resigned from the post.

The president elect, however, tried to downplay the development, telling the media that Goswami had left the meeting to facilitate discussions on the no-confidence motion brought against him. After Goswami walked out of the meeting, the general body unanimously elected Patowary as its president.

Patowary said he was confident of Goswami’s co-operation in “taking the party forward”.

He also appealed to AASU and other “nationalist organisations” to extend their co-operation to the party. The AASU is opposed to Mahanta’s return to the AGP.

Patowary said the party would put pressure on the government to resolve problems like unabated influx of foreigners and floods. “If the government fails to resolve these issues we will start a strong mass movement,” he added.

Earlier, the general body meeting endorsed the unification bid and asked the 11-member unification committee headed by Choudhury to finalise the modalities of the unification process, which was to be completed by October 14. The general body has also empowered the steering committee to amend the constitution of the party if need be to facilitate the unification process.