Maharashtra leader Ashok Chavan quit the party. The party is now concerned that the one Rajya Sabha seat that it can win in Maharashtra in the upcoming elections may be limited to places where the Cong has already formed political alliances with parties.
The obstacles facing the Congress and the INDIA alliance are getting bigger as the Lok Sabha elections get closer. The latest setback occurred on Monday when senior Maharashtra leader Ashok Chavan quit the party.
This came after the JD(U) and RLD withdrew from the INDIA coalition, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Trinamool Congress declared they would fight it out on their own in West Bengal and Punjab, and the Delhi seat-sharing negotiations came to a serious standstill.
Following in the footsteps of Amarinder Singh (Punjab), Ghulam Nabi Azad (Jammu and Kashmir), Vijay Bahuguna (Uttarakhand), the late Ajit Jogi (Chhattisgarh), S M Krishna (Karnataka), Narayan Rane (Maharashtra), and others, Chavan has become the ninth former chief minister of the Congress to leave the party in the last ten years.Giridhar Gamang (Odisha). (Gamang returned to the party recently.)
Ashok Chavan left the party on Monday, the Congress made the decision
iven his reputation for pouting, Chavan’s resignation has been expected for some time. The Congress was surprised, among other things, by the high command’s lack of attempts to appease him. According to sources, at least a month ago, Maharashtra’s AICC in-charge, Ramesh Chennithala, alerted the leadership to the fact that several leaders under investigation were “facing pressure” to resign and that their actions needed to be closely watched.
As Chavan left the party on Monday, the Congress made the decision to point the finger at him and the BJP, implying that the cases against him served as the driving force.
However, the party is preparing for further difficulty behind closed doors, with widespread fears that some MLAs close to the ex-CM (sources put their number at half a dozen) could quit and potentially spoil the Congress’s chances of winning a Rajya Sabha seat from the state in elections later this month.
Chennithala is flying back to Mumbai to meet with key leaders after spending the weekend in Maharashtra and arriving in Delhi. All of the party’s MLAs have been contacted thus far. “How are we supposed to know what their plans are? Ultimately, Chavan himself was present at a Sunday meeting with Chennithala, a high-ranking official stated.
Chennithala insisted, in official capacity, that “Chavan’s exit will not affect the Congress party.”
“I do not think anyone from the Congress will follow Ashok Chavan,” stated former chief minister of Maharashtra Prithviraj Chavan. To assess the situation, the party is convening in Mumbai on Tuesday with all of its MLAs.
In private, Congress leaders also acknowledged that it was obvious that the BJP intended to “systematically” disintegrate the INDIA bloc and drive out party members. Chavan’s departure occurred a few days after the resignations of two other Maharashtra-based Congress leaders, Baba Siddique and Milind Deora. There is concern that the BJP is successfully portraying the Congress as a solitary party and an INDIA bloc in ruins.
As part of a calculated move, the BJP has lowered the intensity of its assault on the INDIA bloc, which it previously dubbed ‘Ghamandiya (arrogant)’ and ‘INDI’ alliance, and is focusing on the Congress.
“Just before Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra was scheduled to enter Bengal, Mamata Banerjee announced that her party will contest independently. Subsequently, Nitish Kumar resigned from the INDIA coalition, JMM chief Hemant Soren was arrested, and the RLD decided to withdraw from Uttar Pradesh.
The NDA “is not on a strong wicket in Maharashtra,” which is why the attempt to split the opposition parties is being made, a senior leader stated. “We are expecting some desertions in Madhya Pradesh as well as well (where the Yatra is headed).”
According to a different Congress leader, the BJP was also working to prevent the party from forming an alliance with the AAP in Delhi.
UP hasn’t been doing well either. The Congress was caught off guard by the SP’s unilateral move to declare its own candidates for 16 seats and proclaim 11 seats for it, even before the RLD shock. A senior remarked, “In the end, we might have seat-sharing agreements only in states like Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Maharashtra, and Jharkhand, where we were in alliances even before the INDIA bloc was formed.”
There is a growing number of Congress officials who are now questioning the timing of the Rahul Yatra. It was a strategically poor decision. We would have refused if the veterans had been consulted by the party. A leader suggested, “Just rest on the former Yatra’s accomplishments, concentrate on working with Indian parties, and plan large joint rallies in state capitals—at least one every week—that would have had a lot more impact.
“Rahul’s plan to embark on a second yatra came up for discussion at the December 21 CWC meeting and almost every leader asked him to go ahead,” retorted another senior.
As it stands, the Yatra will end in Mumbai the following month, and the party believes the MLAs’ and their supporters’ departure is just a publicity stunt.
Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh offered the following official response to Chavan’s departure: “It is always a matter of anguish when friends and colleagues leave a political party that has given them much – perhaps much more than they deserved.” However, THAT Washing Machine will always be more alluring to the weak than intellectual dedication or partisanship. These traitors are unaware of the tremendous opportunity that their departure presents to others whose development they have consistently impeded.