Finally,Cong gets a chance to prove itself

Down in the dumps for five years now,the Congress in Maval has got a godsend opportunity to bounce back into limelight.

Down in the dumps for five years now,the Congress in Maval has got a godsend opportunity to bounce back into limelight. The Chinchwad assembly seat,suspense over which prevailed till the second last day of filing nominations,has gone the Congress way. Pimpri-Chinchwad unit president Bhausaheb Bhoir has been fielded by the Congress to challenge the Shiv Senas Shrirang Barne who until last month was considered the most powerful Congress leader in Maval region.

The NCP decision to hand over the Chinchwad seat to the Congress has surprised political leaders and workers alike as it was widely believed that the NCP would lay claim to the seat as a clutch of leaders,especially MLC Laxman Jagtap,had been nursing the constituency well before the Lok Sabha election process got underway. The announcement about Chinchwad seat,along with four other prominent seats in the state,was made in New Delhi on Thursday afternoon. And the name of Congress candidate was declared past midnight along with those of Praniti Sushilkumar Shinde from Solapur City,Amit Vilasrao Deshmukh from Latur City and five other seats.

What turned the tide in the Congresss favour was the severe opposition to Jagtaps candidature from within the NCP. A major section in the party had apparently conveyed to the leadership their opposition to Jagtap,who they alleged had worked against the party unit chief in Pimpri-Chinchwad Pansare during the Lok Sabha polls.

Jagtap said he had filed his nomination and was ready to contest against his friend Barne. In politics,a contest even between father and son is quite a possibility.

Jagtap said he has no other way,but to contest the election as he has been nursing the constituency for quite long. Another NCP leader Vilas Nandgude has also filed his papers from Chinchwad.

Besides Jagtap,Bhoir also faces a strong challenge from Barne who had walked out of the party last month,after being consistently sidelined from party affairs. For years now,the Congress has struggled to retain its identity in Maval area. Over three years ago,it received a severe drubbing in the PCMC elections when it could win only 20 of the 104 seats. The Congress had split after that with at least 10 of the corporators expelled from the party for anti-party activities,only to be taken back a few months later. The party suffered yet another blow when its claim for at least one Lok Sabha seat was rejected. The NCP had contested both Maval and Shirur.

The jubilant Congress unit in Pimpri-Chinchwad filed Bhoirs election papers by afternoon. Bhoir said he had been camping in New Delhi along with several party leaders,trying to convince the party leaders about the need to get at least one seat to save the Congress from being wiped off from the region.

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Congress leader Babu Nair said they had learnt three days ago that all the three seats of Pimpri,Chinchwad and Bhosari had gone to the NCP. We got to know this from a fax message sent to the party high command in New Delhi. After this,we met many leaders,including A K Antony,Prithviraj Chavan and Shivraj Patil. We told them how the party has suffered as the NCP has been having an upper hand in all the elections.

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