A day after the national executive of the Nationalist Congress Party’s (NCP) youth wing passed a resolution recommending NCP president Sharad Pawar’s name as a chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), a number of Congress MLAs from Maharashtra have sought to meet party president Sonia Gandhi, who currently heads the UPA.
The Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has termed both developments as examples of mistrust between the allies of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance, which rules Maharashtra.
Maharashtra Congress president Nana Patole played down the MLAs’ request to meet Ms. Gandhi and said that meeting the party leadership shouldn’t be seen through political prism. “What is wrong in MLAs wanting to meet party leaders? There could be many issues that they want to discuss. This rumour about a threat to the State government is absolutely baseless,” he said.
Mr. Patole has written a letter to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, reminding him to begin implementation of the MVA’s common minimum programme (CMP), which was put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
State in-charge and All India Congress Committee (AICC) secretary Ashish Dua told The Hindu that many new MLAs of the party haven’t yet met Ms. Gandhi and they wanted to share their thoughts on ongoing political developments with her. “They might be in Delhi on April 5 and 6 and must have sought an appointment. This is immature on part of the BJP — to link everything with threat to government,” Mr. Dua said.
The development comes a day after the national executive of the NCP’s youth wing passed a resolution recommending Mr. Pawar’s name as the UPA chairperson. “I tabled the proposal that he [Mr. Pawar] should lead regional parties and the Congress should make space for regional parties,” said Ravikant Varpe, executive president of the Maharashtra NCP youth wing. Mehboob Sheikh, State NCP youth wing president seconded that Mr. Pawar should be made the UPA chairperson, and the party’s national executive unanimously accepted the resolution. Mr. Pawar was present at the programme.
Maharashtra Congress’ chief spokesperson Atul Londhe said that the party respects the opinion of its allies. “But it is time to stand united against the BJP. It is the Congress which has an all-India presence and can lead the battle, and we are sure that even Sharad Pawar-ji too would agree that only Sonia-ji should lead the UPA,” Mr. Londhe said.
The BJP used the opportunity to claim the developments prove the MVA’s allies don’t trust each other. “Congress MLAs’ meeting with Sonia-ji is to complain against the Chief Minister and his way of functioning — where ruling party MLAs of the Congress cannot get their work done,” BJP spokesperson and MLA Ram Kadam claimed.
