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Congress and Nationalist Congress Party stayed away from the customary tea to which Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis invited them on the eve of the winter session of the Assembly.
The chief minister, too, played truant from the event on Sunday evening, attracting criticism from the missing guests, who thought it was a deliberate attempt to insult them.
The winter session of the Maharashtra Assembly is scheduled to start on Monday in Nagpur. The Congress legislature party took the decision to boycott the customary social event when they learnt that the chief minister would be absent.
“Fadnavis will not be present. This is a deliberate insult of the Opposition. Fadnavis’s decision is anti-democratic and against the parliamentary traditions,” the party leader Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil told Business Standard.
Sunil Tatkare, NCP state unit president, also confirmed his party’s decision to boycott the customary tea. Former deputy chief minister and NCP legislature party leader, Ajit Pawar, said it was objectionable that Fadnavis wanted to belittle the Opposition.
As reason for his absence, the chief minister had cited his visit to Delhi to attend a meeting convened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with chief ministers to discuss an alternative body to replace the Planning Commission. Fadnavis, however, said he had already deputed his senior ministers to attend the customary tea.
The opposition parties on the other hand are planning on how to take on the government on the floor of the Assembly.
Vikhe-Patil said the Congress would focus on drought, rise in farmer suicides, atrocities on Dalits and falling cotton prices. It would also press for implementation of the toll-free state plan, and abolition of local body taxes, as promised by the Bharatiya Janata Party and Shiv Sena while campaigning for the Assembly election.
