Maharashtra Congress leaders led by chief minister Prithviraj Chavan on Monday took stock of the party's prospects in the coming local body elections in the state.
Describing the coming polls as "mini-general elections," Chavan noted Congress and NCP were facing polls independently, though both the parties had electoral alliance for Assembly and parliamentary elections since 1999, when the party split.
Urging party workers to bury their differences and galvanise the organisation's machinery to face elections in Western Maharashtra, which is an NCP stronghold, Chavan said they would have to go to the people and convince them that Congress was committed to "good and transparent governance".
"Congress, facing constraints of coalition government both at the state and the central level, has always taken action against its erring leaders, showing courage which no other party is capable of," Chavan said. The chief minister said the credit for unearthing of the recent scams should go to the Congress and its president Sonia Gandhi, who facilitated passage of Right to Information Act.In an apparent reference to fresh revelations in the 2G spectrum case and controversy surrounding Union Home Minister P Chidambaram, Chavan said, "This too has surfaced through the RTI.
Confusion is created when there is a hair-splitting over a noting on a file."
He said the court would take a proper decision in the matter. Maharashtra Congress president Manikrao Thakre said Congress suffered reverses in the western Maharashtra in the last Assembly elections because "we made compromises with NCP, leaving many seats to it to keep communal forces represented by Shiv Sena, BJP and MNS away".
"But our like-minded allies have joined hands with the communal forces. We will never do that..." Thakre said, and asked party workers to project achievements of the government during the campaign.
