Congress summons Tarun Gogoi, Anjan Dutta to Delhi for talks with Rahul Gandhi, party leadership

NEW DELHI: The Congress high command has summoned Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi and state unit chief Anjan for talks following threats from state party rebels to break off and form a regional party if their grievances are not addressed. Party vice-president Rahul Gandhi may hold talks with Gogoi and Dutta around July 6.
Rebel leader Himanta Biswa Sarma who held talks with AICC general secretary CP Joshi and some others in Delhi left for Assam on Friday but is expected to return to the national Capital for more talks.

With high command representatives agreeing to discuss the rebels’ grievances with the Chief Minister and PCC chief, the Sarma camp is tactically playing along by maintaining they are in talks and “not threatening the high command with an ultimatum”. However sources said, during the meeting with Joshi and some other AICC leaders, the rebels insisted the leadership place before all stake-holders the fact-finding report AICC emissary Mallikarjun Kharge had presented to Sonia Gandhi last year when he was sent to the Guwahati in the wake of rebels raising in revelot against Gogoi’s leadership.

Rebels claimed, according to sources, majority of the Congress MLAs had then conveyed to Kharge that they favored a change of guard in the leadership as a strategy to tackle the accumulated anti-incumbency mood against the three-term rule of Gogoi regime and that the leadership has been sitting on the promise of implementing various suggestions in the undisclosed Kharge report.

Though the high command had then rejected the demand of rebels and continued to back Gogoi, this time the leadership is exploring the ways for hammering out an amicable compromise formula to avert a split in the state Congress ahead of next year’s polls.

While there is no indication of high command thinking about removing Gogoi, the rebels also working with a double-edged bargaining tactics.

While they seem not keen to stake claim for the chief ministership during the difficult remaining slog-overs before the polls, they seem bargaining for restructure of both the cabinet and PCC while keeping open the option of launching a regional party if they failed to get a presentable deal from Delhi.