Mumbai: Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) chief Ashok Chavan on Tuesday rubbished reports of Congress President Rahul Gandhi contesting from the Nanded Lok Sabha seat. Chavan said, “There has been no discussion on who will contest from the Nanded seat. No meeting of the party’s election committee has yet taken place on this matter. The decision on the candidacy of this seat will be taken by the party high command.”
In19 elections and by-elections since 1952, the Congress has retained the Nanded seat 15 times. Chavan, a former chief minister, won the seat in the 2014 Lok Sabha election despite his party succumbing to the ‘Modi wave’ and losing ground in the state. Chavan, meanwhile, attacked the Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP government at an event in Kankavli, Sindhudurg, during the ‘Jan Sangharsha Yatra’ against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government.
“Despite Prime Minister Modi performing the ground-breaking ceremony way back in 2015, why has the BJP government tarried over building a memorial to Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar in the Indu Mills compound?” he asked. It was the erstwhile Congress-NCP government in the state that had first moved that the Indu Mills land be utilised for a grand memorial to Dr Ambdekar, he pointed out.
“In this light, the BJP’s allegations that the Congress was out to grab the Indu Mills land appear utterly ridiculous, to say the least,” Chavan said. In an attack on Narayan Rane, the former Congress leader and chief of Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha, Chavan said the new resurgence of the Congress in the Konkan would put an end to the ‘oppression’ endured by the residents of that region.
