Days after the Eknath Shinde government won the trust vote in Maharashtra, state Congress chief Nana Patole on Thursday held a meeting with the party’s top leadership at party president Sonia Gandhi’s 10 Janpath residence.
Though there was no official statement from the All India Congress Committee (AICC) on the meeting, former party chief Rahul Gandhi and general secretary (organisation) KC Venugopal are said to have attended the meeting.
This is also the first meeting of top leaders with Mr Patole after the collapse of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA). The timing of the meeting is crucial as around a dozen Congress MLAs in Maharashtra could not participate in the voting process. While some were absent, others were late in reaching the floor of the assembly and were not allowed to vote.
Though the Congress supported the Shiv Sena faction led by Uddhav Thackeray, many believe that the Congress MLAs were divided on the issue.
The issue of renaming Aurangabad and Osmanabad was one of the points on which the Congress and the Uddhav Thackeray-led government had differences.
The Congress high command took seriously the cross-voting during the Legislative Council elections in which the party’s first choice and Dalit leader Chandrakant Handore was defeated, while the second Congress candidate and Congress chief of Mumbai unit Bhai Jagtap managed to become the MLC. ,
While two MLAs are said to have cross-voted, five Congress MLAs who were supposed to vote for the party’s first choice are believed to have voted for the second candidate.
Pointing to the disciplinary action, Mr Patole had then tweeted, “The party takes seriously the defeat of Chandrakant Handore in the MLC elections.”