Congress leaders on Tuesday took to social media to claim that the resignation of Devendra Fadnavis as Maharashtra Chief Minister vindicated the party’s stand about numbers and asked the BJP to apologise.
Moments after Mr. Fadnavis announced his resignation, former Maharashtra Chief Minister and Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan asked Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari to invite the Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)-Congress alliance led by Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray to form the government.
‘Spectacle of democracy’
The Congress’s chief spokesperson, Randeep Surjewala, in a series of tweets, posed questions to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, asking “Why such a spectacle of democracy was created in Maharashtra?”
Mr. Surjewala said the “lack of numbers of those who kidnapped the people’s mandate stands exposed with the developments and it was now clear that Chanakyaniti [political strategy] in BJP means abduction of democracy”.
“Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar [NCP leader] should apologise to the people of Maharashtra. Their government was based on lies and defections and fell like a house of cards,” the Congress leader said in a tweet.
At a press conference, Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said the turn of events in Maharashtra had dragged in the President’s office.
“At what point in time, did the PMO send the file to the President? Who in the President’s office dealt with it? Did the President apply his mind to the Governor’s report? For this entire sordid saga as it has played out has brought into serious question the role of even the President of India and it is not that our courts earlier have not commented adversely on the role of the President in unfortunately similar circumstances,” Mr. Tewari said.
“The damage they [BJP] have done to our Constitution and the highest offices in the country, for their sole bid to grab power illegally, will take decades to heal,” said senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel, one of the key negotiators of the Congress-NCP-Sena alliance.
