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How Maharashtra BJP chief's call to empty out Congress caused a flutter

How Maharashtra BJP chief's call to empty out Congress caused a flutter

India Today07-05-2025
The BJP's Maharashtra president and state revenue minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule has called on party leaders and cadre to engineer defections in the Congress, causing a flutter in political circles.
'[Ensure that] the Congress is emptied out. You will gain to the extent the Congress party declines,' Bawankule said while pointing to the recent defection of former MLA and legacy Congress leader Sangram Thopte to the BJP. Bawankule, who was speaking at a meeting of party functionaries in Pune, however, assuaged BJP loyalists that they would be given precedence over newer entrants.
Bawankule's statement drew flak from the Opposition. Harshwardhan Vasantrao Sapkal, president of the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee, likened the BJP to a 'witch that ate up Congress leaders and workers'. He said the BJP's moves indicated the party was not confident of coming to power in the state on its own.
The Congress has 16 MLAs in Maharashtra. Sapkal said a significant part of the state cabinet was made up of leaders who had earlier been with the Congress.
Some prominent ex-Congress figures in the Maharashtra cabinet include Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, Nitesh Rane, Jaykumar Gore and Manikrao Kokate. The BJP has also managed to get former chief minister Ashok Chavan on board.
Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) spokesperson Sanjay Raut alleged the BJP was using power and money to break parties. He mocked that the present-day BJP was largely made up of defectors.
Supriya Sule, Lok Sabha MP from the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar), charged that central enforcement agencies, such as the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation, were being used to split BJP rivals. 'This is not lokshahi (democracy) but dadapshahi (a reign by suppression),' she said.
However, in his defence, Bawankule said the leadership of the Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SCP) lacked the ability to grow their parties. 'They can't handle their parties,' he said.
At the time of joining the BJP, Thopte, a three-term MLA and a 'hardcore Congressman' by his own admission, had claimed that the Congress had given a short shift to his loyalty and ignored him in ministerial appointments. Thopte and his father Anantrao, a former minister, have represented the Bhor assembly constituency in Pune from 1980 to 1999 and 2004 to 2024.
Causing more flutter in the Congress, the BJP has made overtures to another legacy Congress leader—independent Lok Sabha MP Vishal Patil, the grandson of former chief minister and Congress veteran Vasantdada Patil. In the seat-sharing agreement within the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) for the general elections last year, the Sangli constituency was allotted to the Shiv Sena (UBT). Vishal Patil contested the seat as an Independent and won by defeating the BJP's two-term MP Sanjaykaka Patil and the Shiv Sena (UBT)'s Chandrahar Patil. It is also being claimed that Chandrahar Patil, a renowned wrestler, may be on his way to the rival Shiv Sena led by Maharashtra deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde.
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