Nearly ten days after Uddhav Thackeray resigned as the CM and the state’s Maha Vikas Aghadi Govt, crumbled, Congress’s senior leader Rahul Gandhi awakened from his deep slumber and realised that he is “very upset” with his party in Maharashtra. Reportedly, the Gandhi scion has now decided to appoint an observer to take stock of the political situation in Maharashtra.
The decision came a day after Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole met Sonia Gandhi on Thursday. He approached the party’s national president with complaints against some leaders, including former chief minister Ashok Chavan, for being absent during the floor test sought by the now Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde and cross-voting during the Legislative Council elections.
Notably, as many as 11 Congress MLAs abstained from the floor test on July 4, in which Eknath Shinde received the backing of 164 legislators, while the ousted Maha Vikas Aghadi, of which Congress was also a part, got only 99 votes.
Patole, according to sources, also informed Gandhi about the cross-voting by seven Congress MLAs during the June 20 Legislative Council elections, where the party’s official candidate Chandrakant Handore, a well-known Dalit leader, had to suffer a humiliating loss.
Reportedly, Rahul Gandhi and AICC general secretary K C Venugopal were also present at Sonia Gandhi’s residence when Patole met her.
Sources said that the Congress supremos were stunned by the absence of 11 Congress MLAs during the trust vote. Moreover, they were also upset at Maharashtra leaders for not following directives to oppose the renaming of Aurangabad as Sambhajinagar during the last Cabinet meeting chaired by the then Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. Rahul Gandhi expressed his displeasure about the state of affairs in the state and appointed an observer who would visit the state and assess the political situation in Maharashtra.
Notably, while the Shiv Sena party was struggling to sort the political crisis in Maharashtra, the NCP and the Congress who were in coalition with the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government had deliberately kept away from the surging heat. The NCP supremo had stated that the ongoing political crisis was an internal matter of the Shiv Sena party and not the NCP. Meanwhile, the Congress party was also busy glorifying the perky and playful facial expressions of its leader Rahul Gandhi who was being questioned by the Enforcement Directorate in the National Herald case then.
Interestingly, the Congress drama was happening when the Maha Vikas Aghadi government in Maharashtra was in the middle of a grim crisis, inching towards collapse. Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde on June 21 rebelled against the MVA government and demanded a re-alliance of Shiv Sena and BJP. He stated that Shiv Sena was stepping far away from its policies of Hindutva and that it was disrespecting the ideologies of party supremo Balasaheb Thackeray. He also added that the Shiv Sena formed by Balasaheb Thackeray was different from the one that is led by CM Uddhav Thackeray.
On June 29, Uddhav Thackeray announced his resignation as the state’s chief minister and a member of the MLC live on social media, hours before the no-confidence motion on that day. The floor test was cancelled owing to Thackeray’s exit, and the administration was taken over by Eknath Shinde as Chief Minister and Devendra Fadnavis as Deputy Chief Minister of the state of Maharashtra.
