The Sikkim Pradesh Congress Committee (I) has decided to keep merger of the Sikkim Sangram Parishad (SSP) with Congress (I) pending. It was decided in an emergent meeting of SPCC (I). "The rigid proposals put forward by N.B. Bhandari, president, SSP were simply unreasonable and therefore not acceptable either to the All India Congress Committee (I), New Delhi or to the Sikkim Pradesh Congress Committee at Gangtok, and now the chapter of much talked about merger has been kept pending for the time being," SPCC (I) said in a press release.

"However, options are always open and as and when situation warrants, the SPCC (I) will rethink about it as it happens in changing political scenario with prior permission of the High Command, New Delhi", it says. The meeting further discussed about the ensuing Panchayat elections and accordingly the members of the Pradesh Congress Committee and the four District Congress Committees have been instructed to go to their respective constituencies under mass contact programme and submit their reports to the PCC High Command at Gangtok and thereafter to the AICC (I), New Delhi by the end of August to formulate the party strategies for the same.