NCP leaders appeal for calm during Thursday’s meeting. Picture by UB Photos

Guwahati, July 28: The embattled Assam unit of the NCP today had an unusual visitor in a CBI team at its Hedayatpur headquarters here.

The development comes a day after the intra-party rift spilled out of the closet with disgruntled leaders and workers embarrassing the state leadership by seeking their ouster and hurling one allegation after another in front of reporters. They were protesting against the reconstitution of the ad hoc committee by the central leadership on July 25.

Though the CBI office here could not be contacted for confirmation, two-time former MLA from Bilasipara West and former general secretary of the state NCP, Ali Akbar Miah, said sleuths from the premier investigating agency visited the party office and talked to a couple of office-bearers about the problems.

?I have heard that they came in the morning and talked to a couple of office-bearers. They were DSP-level officers and asking about party matters, including the death of our former president Sarat Chandra Sinha and financial anomalies,? Miah said. ?We also strongly feel that Sinha?s death is a fit case for a probe by the country?s leading agency. He died two days after he was dropped from the president?s post in December. He came to know about the central leadership?s decision just like other members at a news conference wherein Lok Sabha MP Purno A. Sangma had announced the new list of office-bearers. We will decide what to do at our July 30 meeting here.?

Former secretary Troilen Deka, present office-bearer Akshay Rajkhowa, former city general secretary Yousuf Ahmed and the party?s Seva Dal chief Khurshed Ali, too, made similar claims.

Ali said a man had come looking for an NCP poll candidate and the discussion soon turned out to be about party matters and Sinha?s death. ?Ahmed was with me but in the middle he left to be with Miah. When I wanted to know who the visiting gentleman was, he said he was a DSP from the CBI,? Ali said.

The protesters had yesterday wanted the resignation of the ad hoc state unit president Prabin Chandra Sarma, working president Dhirendra Dev Adhikari, general secretary Barkat Ullah and treasurer-cum-spokesman Dilip Hazarika. Barring Sarma, none of the other three turned up at the party office today. Sarma, according to Deka, said he would convey the grievances of the state unit to the central leadership, as he was a loyal soldier of the party.