On the other hand, Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) president and member of the dissolved Lok Sabha Tarun Gogoi promptly expelled him from the party for six years for allegedly indulging in anti-party activities. Guwahati city PCC secretary Naren Roy-Choudhury has also been expelled.

While announcing his decision to take the NCP's side, Basumatary said he owed allegiance more to former Lok Sabha speaker Sangma than to the Gogoi, whom he termed as weak and directionless.

Basumatary also claimed that several more important members of the Congress party in Assam would follow suit soon and make the new party a formidable force in the State.

Meanwhile, Assam Congress spokesman Pankaj Bora said that Basumatary was an insignificant party member adding that he was elected tothe State Assembly in 1983 when there was hardly any contest as the other parties had boycotted the elections.

"Basumatary joining the NCP is not a threat to the Congress party. He has no following. He had never held any important post in the APCC," Bora added. The APCC spokesman also refuted claims made by Sangma here recently that several MPs of the party would join the NCP.

In another interesting development, Bijoy Handique, a member of the dissolved Lok Sabha, has indicated that Hemaprabha Saikia, widow of former Assam chief minister Saikia and Congress stalwart, was closer to the NCP by virtue of the Saikia family's close association with B B Dutta, a Rajya Sabha member from the northeast, who had quit the Congress to join Pawar and Sangma.

It was Saikia who had been spreading rumours about the strength of Sangma and B B Dutta in the recent few weeks at the cost of the Congress party's image in Assam and the northeast, Handique claimed.