Nagpur: Vidarbha, once a Congress citadel and its electoral stronghold is now seeing severe infighting following a total whitewash in the region. In Nagpur city where it could manage to win only two of the six seats in city and one of the six in the district witnessed a new low when its iconic office in Devadia Bhavan was locked up to contain the intra-party strife.
Devadia Bhavan, the office of city Congress was locked ostensibly to carry on maintenance work | Photo Credit: Sunny Shende
While factionalism in the party has been a chronic problem, the party licking wounds inflicted by the latest defat went into further tizzy when youth leader and an unsuccessful candidate Rishikesh (Bunty) Shelke squarely blamed state Congress president Nana Patole for his defeat from Nagpur Central seat.
"Patole is an RSS agent and he should own up responsibility for the party's abysmal performance in this election," said Shelke last week after the meeting in Mumbai to discuss the party's worst debacle.
Bunty Shelke, a youth leader of the Congress and defeated candidate from Nagpur has called for sacking of Nana Patole from MPCC chief post for not supporting party nominees in the recent state elections. | Photo Credit: Sunny Shende
His remark and plea for ation against Patole was not taken well by the party top brass. The Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee coordinator Nana Gawande issued a show cause notice to Shelke and warned of expulsion from the party if he could not justify his "outrageous ' statement.
Shelke, kicked off more dust on Monday when instead of replying to the show cause notice of MPCC, he said he was not answerable to a discredited state leadership. "I will explain my stand before party top leader Rahul Gandhi," he said.
Bunty Shelke, defeated Congress candidate from Nagpur Central seat was not allowed to hold a meeting there | Photo Credit: Sunny Shende
Shelke's remarks were a clear affront to local party leaders who ganged up against him and locked up the Devadia Bhavan to foil Shelke's plan to hold a supporters meeting there. Later at a press conf]ference, the party functionaries, Asif Quersi, Haiderali Dosani, Prahant Dhawad and Atul Kotecha said Shelke has crossed all limits of party discipline and should be expelled without further delay.
The Congress party plunged into total disarray following one of its worst performances in recent times winning only 9 of the 62 seats in Vidarbha where the Mahayuti scored an impressive tally of 48 as part of the landslide victory in state.
Till a day before the vote count on November 23, the Congress leaders were so confident of a clean sweep by the Maha Vikas Aghadi that they had started indulging in talk of who would be the CM, Patole himself was a hopeful. But with the worst tally of 16 seats out of 288 in the state, all such hopes were dashed and now the party is reeling under blame game.
