Replacing Ashok Chavan as chief minister of Maharashtra is unlikely to be a Congress affair alone, even as the state legislature party tonight authorised national party chief Sonia Gandhi to decide.
The opinion of its ally, the Nationalist Congress Party, will have to be considered, it appears. A party leader said the frontrunners include Balasaheb Thorat (agriculture minister), Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil( transport minister) and Patangrao Kadam (forest minister). While the NCP has said the change in leadership was the Congress' internal matter, one of its leaders said "Of the three, NCP sees Balasaheb Thorat as the most sober leader. The party does not see any problem also working with Vikhe-Patil or Kadam."
Thorat has been an MLA since 1985, a cabinet minister for the past 11, a staunch Congress and Gandhi family loyalist and a leading figure in the state co-operative movement. Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil is the son of Congress veteran Balasaheb Vikhe-Patil. Both had joined the Shiv Sena briefly but later re-entered the Congress party. Father and son are responsible for the operations of the Pravara cooperative sugar mill and other cooperative organisations in the sugarcane-rich Ahmadnagar district. As for Kadam, he is a staunch party loyalist, having headed various ministries.
Earlier, the two-member central party committee of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and defence minister A K Antony had given its feedback on the scam and Chavan's role in it to national chief Sonia Gandhi. The committee's verbal report said the Chavan's family directly benefited from the Adarsh housing cooperative, the centre of the controversy. But it could not find any evidence against former chief ministers Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sushilkumar Shinde.The committee says their involvement was only procedural.
On Chavan's resignation, the Bharatiya Janata Party said it should have happened long before. "This is just a beginning. The Congress party cannot pretend to have an inquiry when its own chief minister is involved," said party spokesperson Nirmala Seetharaman.
The Shiv Sena went a step further and demanded the entire Maharashtra cabinet also resign, along with Deshmukh, who is Union heavy industries minister, and Union power minister Shinde.
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray, who had earlier said the controversy seemed to have been orchestrated against Chavan, said the party would launch an agitation if no action was taken against the senior administration officers involved in the Adarsh scam.