MUMBAI, 17 November 2007 — The Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee issued a show cause notice to senior party leader and former member of Parliament from Rajapur in Konkan, and presently a legislator of the legislative council, Sudhir Sawant, for lambasting party general secretary and Maharashtra in-charge Margaret Alva, alleging that she has taken money for filling up party posts.
Sawant in a letter sent to Congress President Sonia Gandhi, threatened to resign from the council, if action is not taken against Alva. The Congress leader further in his letter to Sonia had accused Alva of being partisan toward “rich leaders in the party” and protested the removal of six district Congress chiefs from their posts.
MPCC President Prabha Rau confirmed that the show cause notice was served to Sawant by the party’s disciplinary action committee seeking his explanation on his comments made gainst Alva. However, Sawant denied receiving the show cause notice.
Sawant said that since he was an AICC delegate, the MPCC cannot serve him a show cause notice. “I have met senior party bosses in New Delhi on Wednesday and discussed the issues raised by me in my letter to Mrs. Gandhi” he said.
There were apprehensions in the Congress that Sawant would quit the party and join the Shiv Sena, after he met Uddhav Thackeray, the working president of the Sena at the later’s residence on Thursday. However, Sawant denied any such move to join the Sena.
According to Sawant, he has already sent his resignation letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, and now has threatened to give in his papers to the chairman of the legislative council Shivajirao Deshmukh on the day the winter session of begins in Nagpur on November 19. In his letter, Sawant, without naming Narayan Rane, has alleged that the ‘newcomers’ in the party were buying out organisational posts from Alva.
Following the charges, the Congress rank and file in Maharashtra is in a sense of shock. However, a section within the organization is looking at Sawant’s allegation as an excuse to quit the party before the next general elections. In fact, it says Sawant may be on his way out in Konkan.
“Never a mass leader, Sawant has been completely sidelined in Konkan after Narayan Rane joined the Congress. Sawant knows that he will not get party’s candidature for the next Lok Sabha elections and will also be denied the next term in the legislative council after it ends in three months from now,” said a senior Congress leader.
It is learned that Rane wants his staunch supporter Shyam Sawant to be nominated in the legislative council on Sawant’s seat. It is an open secret that Rane wants his elder son Nilesh to contest the next Lok Sabha election from Rajapur constituency.
In another major political development, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president and federal agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, taking serious note of the charges of corruption leveled by renowned social activist Anna Hazare against Sunil Tatkare, the NCP minister of food and civil supplies in the Democratic Front government in Maharashtra, has summoned the minister to Delhi for his explanation to the corruption charges.
