Cong appoints Thorat as Maha party chief

| | Mumbai
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Cong appoints Thorat as Maha party chief

Sunday, 14 July 2019 | TN RAGHUNATHA | Mumbai

In an effort to break logjam in its state party unit after Ashok Chavan’s resignation from the party post, the Congress on Saturday appointed senior party leader and former revenue minister Balasaheb Thorat as the new Maharashtra party chief in Chavan’s place and nominated five party leaders as working presidents.

The new appointments have come in the run-up to the Maharashtra Assembly polls due in October.

This is for the first time in the history of the State Congress that five working presidents have been appointed in addition to a full-fledged president.

The five working presidents are: Nitin Raut, Yashomati Thakur, Basavraj Patil, Vishwajeet Kadam and Muzzafer Hussain.

Interestingly, the appointments have not been done on the basis of regions in the state.  While Raut and Yashomati Thakur come from Vidarbha region, Patil hails from Marathwada region. Vishwajit Kadam, son of late senior Congress leader Patangrao Kadam, is from western Maharashtra, while Hussain comes from Mumbai. 

Chavan’s resignation came in the wake of Rahul Gandhi’s  decision to quite as the Congress president after the party’s debacle in the Lok Sabha polls. Chavan had announced his resignation by saying that t Rahul Gandhi alone was not responsible for the party’s performance in the Lok Sabha elections. “All of us are responsible equally,”  Chavan had said.

The decision to accept to Chavan’s resignation was taken on June 29 during a meeting in New Delhi with Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge. 

Chavan, who had offered to quit from the post as the State Congress president on May 26 immediately after the party’s embarrassing defeat in the Lok Sabha polls last week of May, had subsequently called spoken to Gandhi and insisted that his resignation be accepted.

The Congress suffered a humiliating electoral debacle in Maharashtra, where it could win only one out of the 48 Lok Sabha seats as against two seats bagged in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Chavan himself was defeated on his home turf of Nanded in Marathwada region by Prataprao Patil Chikhalikar of the BJP.

The annexing of Chavans’ home turf of Nanded by the BJP was one of the highlights of the Lok Sabha poll outcome in the state. Barring four terms, Nanded had always been under the control of the Congress since 1952. While late S B Chavan represented the constituency twice (1980 and 1984), Ashok Chavan himself was elected to Lok Sabha once in a bye-election in 1987, following the resignation of his father. Late S B Chavan’s son-in-law and Ashokrao’s brother-in-law Bhaskarao Khatgaonkar has represented the constituency thrice (1998, 1999 and 2009).

The appointment of five State Congress working presidents is being seen as fore-runner to the proposed appointment of five working presidents at the national presidents. Through the new appointments, the party hopes to rejuvenate the party set up ahead of the State Assembly polls to be held in October this year. 

Informed party sources said that with a full-fledged president and five working presidents at the helm, the party would only try to increase its spread in Maharashtra and also increase its accountability for the newly appointed office bearers.

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