Will he quit, won’t he? Ex-Maharashtra CM Ashok Chavan keeps Congress guessing

Chavan has been lying low within the Congress, and is known to be unhappy since the party promoted an “outsider” like Nana Patole (he defected from the BJP) to, first, the Speaker of the Assembly and then Maharashtra PCC president.

Moreover, Chavan, despite being a former CM and ex-state chief, had been given the relatively junior portfolio of PWD in the Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena-NCP-Congress coalition government. Chavan camp followers had made it clear that their leader was entitled to one of the top four portfolios — Home, Energy, Revenue or Finance.

Apart from the senior positions he had held in the past, Chavan was seen as deserving for the fact that even at the height of the 2014 Narendra Modi wave, he had not only won his Nanded Lok Sabha seat but also helped the late Rajiv Satav to victory in neighbouring Hingoli Lok Sabha seat.

Chavan held a closed-door meeting with Sattar on Sunday in Nanded district. As speculation over the meeting grew, Sattar claimed it was “just a courtesy call”. “Since I was touring Nanded district, I decided to visit Chavan’s residence. We had an informal chat.”

He added that he had known Chavan for several decades. “Our association goes back to the days when his father was the CM of Maharashtra and Union minister at the centre… As I have been given the Agriculture Ministry, I sought his guidance,” Sattar said.

Chavan had a similar explanation regarding the meeting. “Don’t draw any political conclusions. Since Sattar was in my home town, he called on me.”

Sattar was among the 40 rebel MLAs who switched from the Uddhav-led Sena to Eknath Shinde’s. A former Congress leader, he had joined the Shiv Sena ahead of the 2019 Assembly elections.

In the new government, Sattar surprised many by managing the important Agriculture portfolio, reportedly after the original choice, Dadasaheb Bhuse, declined. Insiders say Sattar’s followers mounted pressure for him to be accommodated, and managed to have their way.

The reason Chavan and Sattar’s explanations are being taken with a pinch of salt is the former CM’s recent record. Having failed to turn up for the vote of confidence of the Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis government on August 14, along with 10 others, Chavan had come up with an unconvincing excuse that he thought the vote was for later in the day.

Expected to anyway win, the Shinde-led government had secured the vote by 164 is to 99, in a House of 287.

Fadnavis had rubbed the fact in, profusely thanking Chavan and his group “for remaining absent” and indirectly helping the BJP.

Earlier, cross-voting during the Legislative Council polls, which had caused an embarrassing loss for a Congress candidate, had also worked to the BJP’s advantage. One of the leaders against whom fingers were pointed for the cross-voting was Chavan.

State BJP leaders refused to comment on the Chavan-Sattar meeting. While admitting that the BJP would be more than happy to embrace big Congress leaders with electoral merit, a senior BJP functionary said, “The picture will become clearer a year ahead of the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections of 2024.”

The leader did not rule out such a possibility though. “Did anybody anticipate that the Shiv Sena led by Uddhav Thackeray would split so badly? Of the total 55 MLAs, 40 walked away with Shinde.”

Their fingers are crossed, Congress leaders said. A senior party leader pointed out: “In the 2019 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, we saw a huge exodus from the Congress and NCP to the BJP.”