Gangtok, Aug 07: Just a day after the Sikkim Sangram Parishad, the main opposition party in the state, merged with the Congress, a group of disgruntled party leaders, led by the former general secretary, Rajendra Upreti, today asserted that the SSP still existed in the state as a separate entity.
CWC member in-charge of party affairs in Sikkim, Salman Khursheed, had formally announced the merger of the SSP with the Congress in the presence of former chief minister and SSP president Nar Bahadur Bhandari at a press conference in New Delhi yesterday.
Terming it a 'unilateral' decision of Bhandari at a press conference here today, Rajendra Upreti, said that merging with the Congress did not augur well for Bhandari's political future.
Upreti was made the working president of an ad-hoc committee of the SSP which was set up at an emergency meeting of a section of the party's executive committee held here soon after the news on merger trickled in yesterday.

Besides Upreti, prominent among those on the 25-member ad-hoc committee are former SSP vice-presidents, Lendhup Lachenpa and Kamal Kumar Rai.



Contending that Bhandari had violated party norms to tie-up with the Congress, Upreti alleged that he did not take the party into confidence before taking such a major decision.



Replying to a question, he said that most of the party leaders were against the merger proposal on which their views were never sought and claimed that the majority of party workers and executive committee members were with him.



Pointing out that a merger between the Congress and SSP was impossible due to great ideological differences between the two parties, Upreti said, ''This marriage will not last.''


Bureau Report