Shillong, Jan. 31: Meghalaya chief minister J.D. Rymbai may have announced that the leadership issue has been “closed forever,” but his predecessor and challenger to the throne D.D. Lapang is unwilling to give up.

The former chief minister, who was ousted by Rymbai on June 15 last year after 17 Congress MLAs questioned his leadership, has been calling on Congress MLAs to woo them to his side.

The Congress has 29 MLAs in a House of 60.

In a bid to resolve the leadership problem in Meghalaya, the AICC president had asked all the MLAs to cast their votes in a secret ballot on January 17.

However, the fate of the two leaders remain sealed in an envelope, with AICC president Sonia Gandhi too busy in “other engagements” to reveal the name of the new leader.

The crisis has deepened with the Congress now divided into the Rymbai and Lapang camps — with neither willing to give up the fight.

Sources in the PCC said Lapang has been going “from door to door,” to get MLAs to support his claim to the chief minister’s office.

Lapang seems to have told the Congress MLAs that if he was not reinstated as chief minister, it would spell doom for the Congress in the next Assembly elections, scheduled for early 2008.

A number of Congress MLAs have admitted that Lapang had met them but refused to divulge any details.

“The real picture will unfold when the opportune moment comes,” an MLA said.

Another source said Lapang was trying to organise a signature campaign to prove that he has more supporters than Rymbai.

It is, however, not known whether any Congress MLA has signed on the paper, which Lapang is said to have circulated among his supporters.

Incidentally, Lapang ousted in a similar fashion last year.

Rymbai, however, has reportedly assured the regional parties in the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) coalition that he would support United Democratic Party president and deputy chief minister Donkupar Roy as the next chief minister if he was removed.

The UDP is the second largest coalition partner in the MDA.

A source said if reports of Rymbai’s assurances to the regional parties were true, then the ploy “is clearly to keep Lapang out of power and far from the chief ministerial position.”

Rymbai, however, refused to comment on his meeting with regional party MLAs.