The Congress Working Committee (CWC), chaired by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, on November 11 is learnt to have discussed threadbare the possibility of supporting a non-BJP government in Maharashtra from the outside.
However, so far, there has been no formal communication from the Congress. Senior leaders from the State including State Congress chief Balasaheb Thorat, former Chief Ministers Prithviraj Chavan and Ashok Chavan, Leader of the Opposition of of the previous Assembly Vijay Wattedtiwar and Amit Deshmukh are headed to Delhi for another round of meeting for a final call.
Congress sources, after a meeting of its CWC, said that the final announcement on extending support to Shiv Sena will be taken by the State leadership after the evening meeting. The rest of the 44 newly-elected MLAs of the Congress have been asked to head to Mumbai from Jaipur where they have been stationed for the past few days to prevent any attempt of poaching.
The fast-changing political developments in Maharashtra took place after the lone Shiv Sena nominee in the Union Cabinet, Arvind Sawant, resigned as the Heavy Industries Minister. So far, both the Congress that won 44 seats and its ally, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), with 54 seats have maintained that their mandate is to in the Opposition and have refused to be part of Shiv Sena-led alliance.
NCP chief Sharad Pawar, who had earlier met Congress chief to discuss the matter, had asked Sena to first come out of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. Majority of the newly elected Congress members of legislative Assembly (MLA) are said to be in favour of extending support to the Sena. On Sunday, former Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan stressed that the MLAs don't want President's Rule in the State.
