From her 10 Janpath residence, Sonia Gandhi is expected to come out with an official statement within this week, which will put to rest the leadership row within the Congress Legislature Party here.
“I have had a word with Dhaniram Shandil, AICC secretary in-charge of Meghalaya. According to him, an official statement would be issued this week by the party high command on the leadership issue,” Union minister of state for water resources and minority affairs, Vincent H. Pala, told reporters here today.
The statement from the Shillong Lok Sabha MP assumes significance in the wake of the government machinery getting derailed because of the dissension within the Congress.
For nearly two months now, Meghalaya chief minister Mukul Sangma has not been able to convene a cabinet meeting.
Some of Sangma’s cabinet colleagues have been camping in New Delhi along with other dissident legislators to seek his removal from the chief minister’s office.
Others, who are backing the chief minister, have been staying in the national capital to ensure that the Congress high command does not replace him with any other leader.
Since March, around 18 Congress legislators have been asking for Sangma’s removal and are demanding to replace him with former chief minister and veteran leader D.D. Lapang.
The division was not only confined to the legislature wing of the Congress. Even PCC chief Friday Lyngdoh and working president Deborah C. Marak had a spat during a recent news conference when they uttered contradictory statements on Sangma’s fate.
Lyngdoh had said Sangma would stay on as the chief minister. However, Marak differed when she said a CLP meeting would decide the matter. Marak later had to retract saying Lyngdoh’s statement “reflected the official position” of the Meghalaya PCC.
The state Congress has also convened a meeting of its executive committee on June 1 here to discuss the “problems” within the party. The current leadership imbroglio is also expected to figure at the meeting.
Pala said he along with other MPs had approached Prime Minister Manmohan Singh thrice to highlight the problem of downsizing of ministries.
Meghalaya can have only 12 ministers, which is inclusive of the chief minister, in the cabinet ever since downsizing of ministries became mandatory in June 2004.
According to Pala, the mandatory downsizing of ministries was responsible for the several political upheavals in the state. “We need to have at least 18 or 20 ministers. That way, we can stem instability to a great extent,” he said.
The Union minister of state also favoured Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi’s demand to increase the number of ministerial berths.
