Amid growing disgruntlement in the Congress Legislature Party in Assam, 45 'rebel' MLAs have decided to keep on hold their meeting with the Governor in view of a party central observer coming to meet them here.
"Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi told senior MLA Sarat Borkotoky over phone from Delhi this afternoon that Congress leader Motilal Vohra would be coming to Guwahati in the next 3 to 4 days for taking the views of the 45 MLAs individually," Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told reporters.
"Sarat Borkotoky and Congress party officially informed me about Vohra's visit. As he is coming, we have decided to temporarily suspend our meeting with Governor J B Patnaik at 5 PM today at the Raj Bhavan," he said.
"If we were told yesterday that a central party observer was coming then this whole issue of going to the Governor would not have arisen," Sarma asserted.
"Moreover, the media reported that our high command Sonia Gandhi had rejected Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi's resignation. This created more confusion. But this morning (Congress leader in charge of Assam) C P Joshi said Gandhi had neither accepted nor rejected Gogoi's resignation," he said.
"Vohra will meet each of the 45 MLAs individually here to find out the cause for Congress losing so badly in the Lok Sabha elections. All will tell him why we lost the polls," said Sarma, considered to be the leader of the 'rebel' group.
Asked if the rebel legislators wanted Gogoi to be removed from his post, the minister said, "We are not talking about the leadership issue. We never said we will never work under someone or not.
"Our simple demand is that we come to a conclusion why we lost the elections. Under the process of review the responsibility has to be fixed," he said.
"Our intension is not to break Congress in Assam. We want the party should be united and strengthened to win the 2016 assembly elections. We are getting together in the interest of winning the polls," Sarma said.
