Congress sources claimed the CM had already intimated NCP leaders regarding fielding Cong candidate for the by-poll
Mumbai : The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), on Tuesday, blamed Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan for the face-off between the Congress and the NCP over legislative council by-poll.
“The Chief Minister is convener of the co-ordination committee of the alliance. If he had called meeting of the committee and discussed the issue, there would not have been any problem,” NCP spokesperson Nawab malik said while speaking to media.
Mohan Joshi of Congress and state NCP chief Sunil Tatkare are in the fray for the August 21 by-poll which was necessitated following Shiv Sena’s Vinayak Raut’s election to the Lok Sabha. Nominations of both candidates were found valid during scrutiny on Tuesday.
“Congress’ state president Manikrao Thakre is a member of the legislative council and we too want our state chief Sunil Tatkare to be in the Upper House so he can devote time to the campaign for the assembly elections,” Malik said, adding “it was the responsibility of the Chief Minister to evolve a consensus.” He, however, hoped the issue would be resolved through discussions before August 14, the last date of withdrawal. Malik rejected the charge that NCP had fielded Tatkare in order to put pressure on Congress to give it more seats during the assembly elections. “Where is the question of pressure when both parties have already decided on a pre-poll alliance” he asked.
Meanwhile, Congress sour-ces claimed the Chief Minister had already intimated NCP leaders on Sunday that his party would field its candidate for the by-poll.
“Congress helped NCP in getting elected Kiran Pawa-skar and Dhananjay Munde, who came from Shiv Sena and BJP respectively, in council by-polls. In by-election to Rajya Sabha, Congress backed NCP’s Praful Patel. Some years ago, when Avinash Pande of Congress filed his papers for Rajya Sabha, NCP put up industrialist Rahul Bajaj as an independent candidate and got support of Sena-BJP as well. Pande had to withdraw,” a Congress leader said.
Senior leaders and office-bearers of Congress party are in favour of the party contesting council by-election. “If Congress withdraws its candidate, the morale of party workers, already low after Lok Sabha defeat, will be hurt,” he said.
Meanwhile, sources said Deputy CM Ajit Pawar is slated to meet Chavan for discussions on the matter Tuesday night.