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Himanta says Sonia Gandhi offered him Assam CM post, blames Rahul Gandhi for denial
The CM’s claim came a day after former Assam Congress president Bhupen Kumar Borah, who submitted his resignation from the party on Monday, made a similar statement.
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday claimed that senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi had, in 2014, asked him to choose a date for taking oath as the party’s chief minister when 58 MLAs supported him for the post. However, Sarma claimed, the situation changed after Rahul Gandhi, who was then in the United States, intervened through a series of phone calls.
Sarma later left the Congress, before joining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in 2015 following differences with the party leadership and amid allegations that then chief minister Tarun Gogoi was promoting his son, Gaurav Gogoi, now an MP and president of the Assam Congress.
“Sonia Gandhi had called me to her residence and asked me to choose the date of my swearing-in, and I had stated that I would take oath after Ambubachi Mela (held annually at Kamakhya Temple in Guwahati). But that decision was overturned after Rahul Gandhi, who was in the US at that time, made some calls,” Sarma told journalists in Guwahati.
The chief minister’s claim came a day after former Assam Congress president Bhupen Kumar Borah, who submitted his resignation from the party on Monday, made a similar statement.
“If I had become a Congress CM, history would have remembered me with disgrace as I would not have been able to work for Sanatan (Dharma) or the Assamese people. I thank Rahul Gandhi for not making me a CM then, for which now I can proudly work for both Sanatan Dharma and the Assamese people,” Sarma claimed.
