NAGAON, Sept. 29 :     Kailram Borah and Kamal Sharmah had a common thread running through them on the eve of the February 1998 polls. Both were Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) workers in Chakarigaon. Both had resigned from the party membership as they were mortally scared of receiving a thrashing from the United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa) for campaigning for Jayashree Goswami-Mahanta, the party candidate for the Nagaon parliamentary constituency and wife of chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta. But on the eve of the 1999 elections, Borah and Sharmah have in common are among the scores of returnees to the AGP fold. The fear of falling prey to the Ulfa?s canes or Kalashnikovs simply seems to have disappeared from their minds. It was past 10 pm on Monday and Borah and Sharmah, along with two dozen party workers, were still in attendance at the party?s makeshift election office at Chakarigaon along National Highway 37. There was neither an armed policeman nor a single weapon in sight. Against the backdrop of the fear-induced desertion by the AGP workers in Chakarigaon barely one-and-a-half years ago, it was hard to find an AGP election establishment here this time daring to keep shutters open after sundown ? a fearless exhibition of defiance of the threat of a ?bloodbath? by the Ulfa. Last year, six centres had been set up for the 6,000-odd voters of Chakarigaon to cast their ballots. Not a single ballot was cast in five centres. In fact, if the Ulfa had made Nagaon and its AGP workers the prime target in the last Lok Sabha elections, it was because the ruling party?s candidate from here was the chief minister?s wife. ?Because of Baidu?s (Jayashree Mahanta?s) presence in the fray, the Ulfa knew that every step it takes to subvert the poll process would be publicised by the media and they would derive tremendous mileage from this,? he explained. And Jayashree Mahanta, who was the AGP candidate in 1998 from Nagaon and ?lost to the Ulfa and not to the Congress last time? has donned an altogether new role in the constituency this time. She is the star campaigner for AGP candidate Muhiram Saikia, former Union minister of state for human resources development. To keep up the high spirits of the AGP workers this time, she is addressing meetings in the interior area still late in the night. It is not only the AGP that has decided to burn the midnight oil at its election offices to chalk out strategies. The scene at the BJP office at Dekargaon along National Highway 37 was no different. A few minutes away from midnight, a game of carrom was in full swing at one corner of the BJP tent while a few senior leaders were engrossed with the voters? list. ?If electioneering is going on till midnight at some places in Nagaon this time, it is simply because of the confidence that the security forces have been able to instil in the people,? said Digen Baruah, anchalik president of the BJP Yuva Morcha. Baruah clarified that last year, the people had ?boycotted? the elections as a mark of protest against the killing of an AGP worker from the village, Pabin Kalita. Instead of casting their ballots, the people came out of their houses on polling day and whitewashed all the wall writings of the Ulfa, ?ordering? the people not to vote. The people vowed to ?defy the Ulfa for all times to come? and that resolve seems to prevail.