July 4: Less than 24 hours after getting Sonia Gandhi?s seal on the composition of his new team, Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi rushed to 10 Janpath for the second time with a revised list to calm restive ministers who had got wind of their omission from the original one.
A Gogoi aide said lobbying intensified as word got around that some senior ministers were not on the list approved yesterday by the Congress president. ?After getting a whiff of a revolt, the chief minister had no option but to take a second look at the list.?
Another source said the disgruntled Congress leaders persuaded defence minister Pranab Mukherjee and minister of state for heavy industries Santosh Mohan Dev to speak for them. ?The two ministers, in turn, prevailed upon the AICC leader in charge of Assam, Digvijay Singh, to ask the chief minister to revise the list.?
Gogoi went into a huddle with the screening committee, including Ambika Soni, Motilal Vohra and Singh, this afternoon. A new list was prepared during the brainstorming session.
The chief minister met Sonia Gandhi later in the day to seek her approval. He had had an hour-long discussion with the Congress chief yesterday to finalise the original list.
?The list has been finalised. The onus is on the chief minister to reveal it when he deems fit. There will be no more meetings,? Singh had told the media at New Delhi?s Assam Bhavan last night.
Gogoi decided to review the list after consulting Singh this morning. ?Voices of dissent were heard after news spread that Sarat Barkatoki and Himanta Biswa Sarma?s names were not on the list.
Another aspirant, Chandan Sarkar, was not on the list. These leaders approached Mukherjee and Dev to pressure the chief minister and Singh into reviewing the list,? the source said.
He could not confirm whether the three leaders were included in the list during the review.
In Manipur, chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh?s colleagues resigned today to save him the trouble of dropping most of them to bring the size of the ministry down from 33 to 12.
Speaker T.N. Haokip and chairperson of the Hill Areas Committee S. Songshinkhup quit, too, but deputy Speaker L. Lala Singh refused to do so.
The constituents of the ruling Secular Progressive Front met last night and unanimously decided to give Ibobi Singh a ?free hand? to choose his team.