New Delhi: Congress chief Sonia Gandhi is upset over three MLAs recently cross-voting in the June 20 MLC elections leading to the loss of a party nominee and the absence of 11 lawmakers during the crucial July 4 trust vote of Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde.
"The Congress president is upset over the two developments. The party will soon set up a panel to probe the lapses on part of the lawmakers. Appropriate action will follow,” AICC in-charge Maharashtra HK Patil said in an exclusive interview shortly after he briefed Sonia Gandhi over the developments. Though all the 11 MLAs have been given a show-cause notice by the party, Patil said three of them had taken permission from him saying they would not be able to attend the trust vote.
“The remaining eight said later that they got late in reaching the assembly. That needs to be probed,” said Patil. Recently, former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan urged the high command to probe the lapses on part of the party lawmakers saying these were serious acts of violation of the party whip. The probe panel, said Patil, could be announced soon and would have some prominent leaders outside of Maharashtra to ensure a neutral investigation.
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The Maharashtra Congress in-charge slammed the rebel Shiv Sena group and the BJP over the way the “undemocratic” trust vote was conducted to keep former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray out. “It was not done as per rules. It was done in the wrong way,” he said. According to sources, cross-voting by three Congress lawmakers, who voted in the MLC polls on June 20, led to the defeat of party nominee Chandrakant Handore, the state working president.
The other Congress nominee, Mumbai unit chief Bhai Jagtap, however, won. “We have 44 MLAs in the Assembly. But we got only 41 votes in favour of two candidates. As a result, Handore lost although he was supposed to get first preference votes,” said Patil. Both Handore, a Dalit leader, and Jagtap, a Maratha leader, had been named by Gandhi as nominees on June 8.
The Congress got two MLC seats as per an arrangement within the then ruling Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress alliance and was banking on the support of the other two parties for a smooth sail for its candidates. Infighting in the state Congress unit, however, caused the poll loss for Handore. Congress Legislative Party leader Balasaheb Thorat, who was a minister in the former alliance government, was directly supervising the MLC polls.
The Maharashtra Congress has been trying to curb infighting for the past several months. In April, around 20 Congress lawmakers met party chief Sonia Gandhi in Delhi to register their complaints against the Sena and NCP as well as their own leaders. Most of the complaints related to the allocation of development funds in their areas and the clearance of developmental projects. The infighting again came to the fore on July 4, when 11 Congress MLAs were absent during the crucial trust vote which was later won by Eknath Shinde with the help of the BJP.
