A party rally organised here on Monday for instance saw Mahanta, also the party president, and several other top leaders of the AGP appeal to the frontal organisations to gear up their activities. There is another reason to it apart from the fact that the party has the crucial Assembly elections ahead, though officially only around May, 2001.

The panchayat elections in the state are long overdue, and Mahanta's government has been facing criticism not only from the Opposition parties in the state, but also from the Centre. The state government has been blaming the non-settlement of the Bodoland Autonomous Council (BAC) boundary for the delay.

The Opposition, especially the Congress, has been pressing the AGP-led governmentto hold panchayat elections immediately, and it even went for a massive `jail bharo' agitation last week to highlight the issue.

For the Congress, capturing the panchayat bodies ahead of the next round of Assembly polls, and at a time when the popularity of the AGP is in a low ebb, is the best opportunity to prepare for the general elections.

The AGP president asked the party's women, farmers and labour wings to strengthen themselves by enrolling more members, with an aim to perform better than expected in the panchayat elections.

Mahanta at the same time has also begun demanding more powers for the states, and blamed the Centre for accumulating maximum powers with it. ``The Congress is to be blamed squarely for the present status of depriving more powers to the states,'' Mahanta said.

He and other senior leaders of the regional party have also lashed out at the Centre for spiralling prices of essential commodities, saying that it was for the wrong policies of the Centre that the common people instates, especially like those in the remote north-eastern region, have been suffering.

That the state government is also reeling under acute financial crisis has also been attributed to New Delhi. Mahanta had only last week gone to Delhi to plead with the Centre to bail his government out from the perennial financial crunch.

The Assam government, which has to shell out around Rs 270 crore to the Centre as repayment of central loans every month, is being compelled to start off every month with an overdraft of Rs 70 to Rs 80 crore, almost regularly leading to late payment of monthly salaries to its employees.

With a monthly expenditure of Rs 375 crore, Mahanta's government, and for that matter successive governments in the state for the last two decades, has fallen into a vicious circle of overdrafts from the Reserve Bank, Mahanta has revealed.

On the home front, the AGP appears to be losing support of the religious minorities, a formidable block which becomes the deciding factor in formation andpulling down of governments in Assam, especially with state Governor S K Sinha sending a report to the President suggesting scrapping the controversial Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act.