AGP president Brindaban Goswami and expelled founder member Prafulla Kumar Mahanta on an elephant, the party?s symbol, in Guwahati earlier this year. A file picture

Guwahati, Aug. 23: The AGP may have taken Prafulla Kumar Mahanta out of the party, but could find it difficult to take its identity out of him.

The party is bracing for a jumbo battle to keep its symbol, the elephant, and its name from becoming the expelled leader?s property. AGP legislator and staunch Mahanta loyalist Sahidul Alam Choudhury said today that his faction would move the Election Commission soon to claim the symbol and the party?s name. ?We are ready with the presentation to be made before the Election Commission for the name Asom Gana Parishad and its symbol, the elephant.?

Choudhury said the pro-Mahanta faction would explore legal options, if required, to wrest the party?s name and its symbol. ?We are the real AGP; so it is natural that the name of the party and its symbol should be given to us.?

The Mahanta camp intends to stake claim to both after the two-day political convention, beginning September 14, at the ITA Cultural Complex in Machkhowa.

The AGP leadership, however, dismissed it as an ?ambitious claim?. Senior party leader Ramendra Narayan Kalita said Mahanta neither had the support of the majority of MLAs and MPs, nor that of the executive committee, to stand a chance of getting the party?s name and symbol. ?A minuscule breakaway group cannot claim to be the real party. The name and symbol of the party will remain with the majority. If they make claims, we are fully prepared to squash them,? he said.

Kalita said the Mahanta camp was trying to confuse AGP supporters by talking of moving the Election Commission and exploring legal options.

But Choudhury insisted that the battle for the party?s name and symbol would be more hard-fought than what Brindaban Goswami and company was anticipating. ?Who has the majority support within the party will be proved at the appropriate time,? he said.

Sources said both AGP factions were actually worried that the battle of attrition could turn violent. Supporters of either group clashed in Lakhimpur recently for control of the AGP office.

The AGP leadership has asked all district units to be prepared to thwart any move by the Mahanta camp to ?capture? more party offices.