Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan on Saturday came under scathing attack at a meeting of the AICC committee headed by senior leader A.K. Antony, with some state leaders telling the high command that the party’s fate would be no better in the Assembly polls, due by October.
Going into the causes of the party’s worst electoral debacle in the Lok Sabha polls, the committee was told by detractors of the CM as also PCC chief Manikrao Thakre that the failure of the state leadership to rise to the occasion cost the party dearly, party sources said.
The panel led by Mr Antony met party leaders from Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh on Saturday. The Congress has won two seats each in the two states, which have 48 and 39 Lok Sabha seats, respectively.
About 20 select leaders from Maharashtra met the Antony committee at the party’s “war room” in Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Road here. They had a one-on-one meeting with the committee consisting of AICC general secretary Mukul Wasnik and AICC secretary Avinash Pande, who are from Maharashtra. The fourth member of the panel is Rajya Sabha member R.C. Khuntia.
According to sources, the leaders viewed this exercise as nothing but a “ritual” as party chief Sonia Gandhi knows well the factors behind the party’s debacle. The Chavan-Thakre team cannot motivate workers nor has a constituency outside the party.
Mr Chavan is said to have met the Antony panel for over half an hour. He presented before the panel an “action plan” consisting of election preparation, campaign and political decisions to be taken in the coming days.
Sources close to the CM said he suggested that seat-sharing negotiations with allies and selection of candidates be completed by the end of July. He also said the Assembly elections would be different from the Lok Sabha polls and therefore the results may not necessarily be on the lines of those in the general election. He gave the panel a list of party candidates who received financial assistance from him.
The argument of Mr Chavan’s supporters was that the writing was on the wall as pre-poll surveys conducted by the Congress immediately after Mr Narendra Modi was projected as the BJP’s PM candidate showed as much as 54 per cent support to the NDA and just 36 per cent for the ruling UPA. This gap widened as the polls neared.
Detractors of the CM complained to the committee that candidates did not get adequate resources from the state leadership at a time when the NDA campaign was aggressive. There was not much to write home about the accomplishments of the Chavan government, they said.
The Congress has been a divided house since its defeat in the Lok Sabha polls with detractors of the CM, like Mr Narayan Rane and Mr Ashok Chavan, giving ample indications that the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance will come to power in the coming Assembly elections if the chief minister is not changed.