Mumbai: All is not well in the state Congress after the debacle in the assembly election. Bunty Shelke, a Congress candidate who lost from Nagpur Central constituency, has accused state Congress chief Nana Patole of secretly working for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), BJP’s ideologue.
Shelke accused Patole of conspiring against him and blamed him for his defeat. Shelke lost the poll in a close contest with BJP candidate Pravin Datke, by 11,632 votes. Speaking to reporters, Shelke said, “Nana is a RSS agent and destroyed the party. It is because of him that Congress slipped to fifth position in the state. In my constituency he had directed the local leaders not to support me. He even did not recommend my name despite the fact that I lost the seat only by 4,000 votes in 2019”.
Shelke also said that Patole’s entire focus was on how to become the chief minister if the MVA comes to power. Shelke’s allegations virtually created flutter into the political circle. So far Patole has not issued any clarification over these accusations. Shelke was elected as a corporator in 2017 from the constituency that houses the RSS headquarters and the residences of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and union minister Nitin Gadkari.
As the state Congress party reviewed the reasons for its poor performance in the Assembly polls in an introspection meeting at its office, the top leadership faced serious accusations from its workers.
Meanwhile, Nana Patole, after meeting the newly-elected MLAs as well as the defeated candidates accused the election commission of robbing the people of their votes by pointing at the last-hour rise in voting percentage.
Referring to the data released by the election commission, Patole said that the voter turnout at 5pm on polling day was reported as 58.22 per cent. By 11:30pm, the same night, it increased to 65.02 per cent, and by the next day, November 21, it rose to 66.05 per cent. This shows a clear increase of 7.83 percentage points, or 7.6 million. “The rise is doubtful, and the poll body should release video footage from the polling centres where such a rise was recorded,” he demanded.
As many as 85 candidates of Congress were defeated in the assembly elections, with 17 candidates losing by more than 50,000 votes.
It may be recalled that the Congress had in its manifesto for the 2024 Lok Sabha election mentioned the “efficiency” of EVMs. The setback for the Congress-led Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) in the Maharashtra election, which has sparked the latest controversy, shouldn’t have come as a surprise, at least to the Congress. Internal surveys for the Congress suggested that the BJP-led Mahayuti was gaining over the Congress-led MVA. Now the party leaders have trained their guns on the Election Commission.
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