Even before the results for the Maharashtra Assembly polls are declared on October 19, the blame game has begun within the Congress anticipating a drubbing. While a whisper campaign against former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan and state Congress president Manikrao Thakre had begun immediately after exit poll results projected party’s poll debacle, more voices of discontent came out in the open Friday, with party leaders publicly airing their grievances. Sitting Congress MLA from Nagpur’s Saoner constituency, Sunil Kedar, who is known to be a loyalist of former CM Ashok Chavan, said, “Chavan will be responsible if the Congress suffers a defeat. He has betrayed Congress candidates and misinformed party seniors. The party’s poll campaign was mismanaged. Chavan and party’s other leaders remained largely confined to their own constituencies.” Kedar said that Thakre and All India Congress Committee’s Maharashtra in-charge Mohan Prakash would also be responsible for the defeat. While complaining that sufficient resources were not provided to party candidates to contest, Kedar took a swipe at Prithviraj Chavan. “Where did the money for election in Chavan’s Karad (South) constituency come from,” he said. Several other senior party leaders have also complained about party candidates not being provided with sufficient resources to contest polls. Chavan has also been facing fire from party leaders for his controversial newspaper interview on the eve of polling day where he was claimed to have said that Congress would have been “decimated” had he acted against three of his predecessors (late) Vilasrao Deshmukh, Ashok Chavan, and Sushilkumar Shinde in the Adarsh housing society scam. Thakre himself criticised Chavan for the interview Friday. “The controversial remarks made by him were unwarranted. It impacted the party’s poll campaign. While Chavan has apologised for his remarks, these should never have been made.” Earlier, an apologetic Chavan said, “Remarks made unofficially by me after the interview came out in print. It was a mistake, I apologise for that.” In a bid to control the damage, Congress’s national spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said in Delhi on Friday, “Mr Chavan, whose punishment you call for, never said anything about putting these people to jail. He has already clarified he never said so. The original transcripts also do not indicate that he said so. He said something very different, generally about Adarsh. While I can understand the opposition using this opportunity in their advertisement, I cannot understand the confusion among others,” he said. Mohan Prakash said he did not wish to comment on the blame game that has ensued. Thakre, however, conceded that the Congress poll campaign fell short. “We would have to accept that there were a few days when Prithviraj Chavan was tied up in his own constituency,” he said. Sources said the Congress high command has plans to undertake a complete overhaul of the party organisation in Maharashtra in a bid to rejuvenate the cadre. Reliable sources said Thakre would be replaced as the party’s state chief. The party high command is also said to be displeased with Chavan, party sources said. While Chavan remained unavailable for comment, his supporters said attempts were on to make him a “scapegoat”. “While Chavan held 40 rallies across the state, several other senior ministers remained entirely confined to their own constituencies,” one of his close aides said, adding that it was unfair to single out Chavan alone for shortfalls in the poll campaign. Former CM Narayan Rane was Congress’s poll committee chief while former CM Ashok Chavan headed the coordination panel.
