MUMBAI: Former Maharashtra chief minister and federal minister for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises Vilasrao Deshmukh from the Congress Party and veteran senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Govindrao Adik and NCP youth leader Ranjitsinh Mohite Patil are all set to enter the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of Parliament).
All the three Democratic Front candidates filed their nomination on Thursday at the State Legislature.
It is necessary for Deshmukh to get elected to retain his ministerial berth, as he is neither a member of the Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha and he requires to be member of one of the houses of Parliament in six months since the time he assumed office.
The elections to the Rajya Sabha were necessitated as three of its members federal power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde of the Congress, federal civil aviation minister Praful Patel and Supriya Sule, daughter of NCP supremo and federal agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, both from the NCP, got elected to the Lok Sabha in the recent polls.
Deshmukh filed the nominations in presence of Chief Minister Ashok Chavan, State Congress Committee President Manikrao Thakre and Mumbai Congress chief Kripashankar Singh. Adik and Mohite-Patil filed the papers in the presence of Deputy Chief Minister Chhagan Bhujbal, state NCP chief R R Patil, Finance Minister Dilip Walse-Patil and Water Resources Minister Ajit Pawar.
Adik, a former state Congress chief, before the Lok Sabha polls switched over to the NCP and has been rewarded now with the Rajya Sabha nomination. However, senior Dalit leader and Republican Party of India President Ramdas Athavale, considered to be key ally of the Democratic Front who lost the elections from Shirdi, was denied a ticket. But he said that he was offered a nomination, but rejected it.
In another development with an eye on the forthcoming state assembly polls, the Democratic Front government wants to regularize pre-2000 slums, but there is a hitch — the Supreme Court of India has to agree to this move.
In a major political move, the state government on Wednesday decided to regularize all slums which have been built since Jan. 1, 2000.
The decision was taken at the weekly Cabinet meeting presided over by Chief Minister Ashok Chavan. The move would help the Congress-NCP combine in garnering votes, particularly in Mumbai.
The decision to extend the cut-off date to regularize slums from the current Jan. 1, 1995 to Jan. 1, 2000 is aimed at winning over the urban poor, political analysts said.
An official press communiqué said that people staying in slums that have come up before Jan. 1, 2000 would be entitled to various schemes of Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA).
