NEW DELHI: A day after Congress leader Anand Sharma slammed his party for a tie-up with the Indian Secular Front (ISF) in the poll-bound West Bengal, Bengal Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said that the former was trying to please his future boss. Chowdhury was replying to speculations that Sharma may join the BJP soon.

A visibly angry Chowdhury said, "If his intentions were honest, he could have simply called me. I would have explained the decision of alliance partners to him...but he thought it was better to tarnish the image of the Congress to please somebody who could be his future political boss."

Sharma is currently the Deputy Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha while Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury is Leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha.

Venting his anger Chowdhury went ahead to accuse Sharma of criticizing the Congress without any reason. "He is more vocal against Congress without any reason and is simply blowing the issue out of proportion," he said. 

The public dissent between the two Congres leaders comes close to the heels of a meeting of Congress G-23 in Jammu, where senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad praised PM Narendra Modi for not forgetting his roots. 

G-23 is infamously referred to the 23 signatories of the letter by Congress leaders to party president Sonia Gandhi seeking reforms in the organization last year. Some of the prominent members of G-23 leaders include Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma, Kapil Sibal, Manish Tewari, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Raj Babbar, Vivek Tankha, and others.

Meanwhile, Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi has constituted a screening committee under the chairmanship of Delhi Congress leader JP Aggarwal for the eight-phase Bengal Assembly polls starting March 27 to screen the probable party candidates and put forward its recommendations to the Central Election Committee of the Congress chaired by her.