Rahul Gandhi Exhorts Maharashtra Cong Leaders To Fight Unitedly, Not To Project CM's Face

Rahul Gandhi reviewed the poll strategy, along with key state leaders, on October 4 to assess the opposition’s readiness for the forthcoming Assembly polls.

New Delhi: Fight the Assembly elections unitedly and do not project a Chief Ministerial face for the sake of Maha Vikas Aghadi, Rahul Gandhi told the Maharashtra Congress leaders when he reviewed the poll preparations with them on October 14.

According to party insiders, Rahul Gandhi sounded the caution after reports suggested that infighting in the Haryana unit, mainly over turf war and Chief Ministerial ambitions of senior leaders like BS Hooda, Kumari Selja and Randeep Surjewala, had played a major role behind the Congress poll loss when all projections were in favour of the grand old party.

Like Haryana, the political ambitions of the Maharashtra unit leaders, too, have been a cause for concern for the high command, which is trying hard to win the western state.

“Rahul Gandhi always reminds us that we should be united in our fight against the BJP and its allies. In Maharashtra, the fight is very significant as they have usurped our government through illegal means. All the state leaders will be united. As for the Chief Ministerial face, that will be decided after the elections,” AICC secretary in-charge of Maharashtra BM Sandeep told ETV Bharat.

Rahul, who took all the key decisions related to the Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir polls, where the NC-Congress alliance is set to assume power on October 16, is also supervising the Maharashtra and the Jharkhand elections.

Accordingly, the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha will soon visit the two states to launch the Congress guarantees, which will be a major focus of the election campaign besides the failures of the coalition government led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.

“Rahul Gandhi will soon visit the state and will unveil the Congress guarantees. We are ready and the MVA will win the polls,” Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole told ETV Bharat.

In the past, the power tussle between Patole and senior leader Balasaheb Thorat had reached the high command several times as well as the reported cross-voting by the party MLAs during the Rajya Sabha and later MLC elections.

That was the reason why Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge in consultation with Rahul Gandhi had deployed Kerala veteran Ramesh Chennithala as the AICC in-charge of Maharashtra in December 2023.

Patole had also been claiming that the Congress, which had emerged as the single largest party in the state after the Lok Sabha elections by winning 13 out of 48 seats will also be the single largest party in the Assembly and will have its Chief Minister. These claims had irked the allies Shiv Sena UBT, which has been pushing the candidature of its leader Uddhav Thackeray for the top post.

Another ally, NCP-SP boss Sharad Pawar, has cleverly kept his party out of the race for Chief Ministership, but would certainly like to play the role of a kingmaker if an opportunity arises.

The reason is that Sharad Pawar was the architect of the Shiv Sena UBT-Congress-NCP alliance, which came to power in Maharashtra in 2019. The alliance known as MVA was ousted from power when Shiv Sena rebel Eknath Shinde became Chief Minister with the help of the BJP in 2022.