PA Sangma's daughter Agatha today reportedly offered to quit as Minister of State for Rural Development.
In a span of 10 days, Agatha skipped three meetings, apparently to avoid media scrutiny on her father, PA Sangma, who was contesting the presidential election as a candidate of the BJP and some other opposition parties.
Despite the fact that Agatha had largely stayed away from campaigning for her father, there were reports earlier that the NCP youth wing has been calling for her ouster from the party.
Bhubaneswar: Opposition Presidential candidate PA Sangma yesterday said that his two daughters, Christie and Agatha, were named after prominent British novelist Agatha Christie, whose book was presented to him by the then Orissa chief minister Biju Patnaik.
I named my two daughters after Agatha Christie. Biju Patnaik had presented me with a Agatha Christe book when I met him for the first time in 1977, Sangma told a gathering of BJD MLAs and MPs during his campaign trail here.
PA Sangma, who broke away with the NCP last year to contest the presidential elections, though unsuccessfully, on Saturday launched National People's Party (NPP), and chosen a book as its symbol. Sangma has chosen to align his partywith the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
Launching the NPP at the national level, Sangma said it has been active for long as a recognised party from Manipur. The former Lok Sabha Speaker, who is the president of the party, said his daughter Agatha, MP from Tura, Meghalaya, will be in NCP for the time being on technical grounds.
New Delhi: P A Sangma, who broke ranks withthe NCP to fight Presidential election against PranabMukherjee, will launch his own party tomorrow. Sangma's National People's Party (NPP) will be formallylaunched at a function in the capital.
His daughter Agatha, anNCP MP, may not join the new outfit as of now. Tomorrow, we will have our first central executivecommittee meeting and then our party will be launched bySangma. We will make several important announcementstomorrow, Alok Kumar Goel, National Secretary of the new party, told PTI.
You may still call it UPA-2, but for all practical purposes yesterday's cabinet reshuffle has reduced the central ministry to a Congress government. This is perhaps the most significant development to emerge from the exercise, which did not send major signals on governance, or youth or anything else.
The reshuffle - presumably the last one before the next general election - presents a unique situation where a minority Manmohan Singh government now controls all major ministries, and can no longer blame anything that goes wrong on allies or the compulsions of coalition politics.
Sample the facts. Of the 22 ministers sworn in on Sunday, 21 were from the Congress. It would have been a completely Congress affair, but for the predestined exclusion of young Agatha Sangma - who was chucked out for the unforgivable sin of backing her own father, PA Sangma, for the presidency. She has been replaced by the NCP by Tariq Anwar as a junior minister in party boss Sharad Pawar's Agriculture Ministry.
New Delhi: Ahead of Sunday's reshuffle of the Union Council of Ministers, seven ministers resigned from the central government on Saturday.
Incumbent minister of state for rural development of the Nationalist Congress Party Agatha Sangma and MoS for Water Resources and Minority Affairs Vincent H Pala submitted their resignations on Saturday evening.
