Barely a week after deserting the Congress for the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), former top Congress leader and once Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi’s closest aide Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday poached nine more Congress legislators and announced that they would formally join the saffron party soon.

“Another list of 10 more Congress MLAs is also ready, awaiting clearance by the BJP central leadership. Believe me, everybody in the Congress, barring Tarun Gogoi, now wants to join the BJP,” said Sarma, who first met BJP national general secretary Ram Madhav before taking the nine legislators to BJP chief Amit Shah in the national Capital. Sarma also said he would quit his MLA-ship in a day or two after reaching Guwahati.

The nine Congress legislators who have jumped ship are Jayanta Malla Barua (Nalbari LAC), Pijush Hazarika (Raha), Rajen Borthakur (Tezpur), Pallab Lochan Das (Behali), Binanda Saikia (Sipajhar), Kripanath Malla (Ratabari), Abu Taher Bepari (Golakganj), Bolin Chetia (Sadiya) and Pradan Barua (Jonai). Of them Chetia and Barua are also parliamentary secretaries in the Tarun Gogoi government.

Interestingly, all these nine Congress MLAs had rushed to Guwahati’s Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport when Sarma arrived from New Delhi for a 25-km road show to the state BJP office, following which the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) had served them show-cause notices.

On Saturday, as the 10 were seen live on TV news channels emerging from the BJP president’s residence, a helpless APCC chief Anjan Dutta in Guwahati said the party would expel all of them for anti-party activities.

Sarma, who had played a crucial role in bringing the Congress to power in Assam in 2001 and subsequently stood by Tarun Gogoi in ensuring the party’s victory in the 2006 and 2011 elections, fell out with the chief minister in 2013 after the latter introduced his son (and now Lok Sabha member) Gaurav Gogoi to politics.

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