MUMBAI--Three months after her party lost polls in Maharashtra, Nationalist Congress Party MP Supriya Sule has hit out at former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan saying that the “petty games” he played led to the downfall of the Congress-NCP alliance.
Blaming Chavan for the poll debacle, Sule said that the former chief minister failed to take Congress leaders along with him. “Had Chavan ensured 200 seats for Congress and not a single seat for NCP, I would have said hats off to him. But what has he achieved through his petty games. He ran a campaign against us by giving documents to the media. He was over-confident and played very petty games that led to the fall of the alliance. Nobody talks to him in his party, ” she said in an interview to Indian Express on Thursday.
The Congress was reduced to just two seats and the NCP four in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. In the assembly elections which followed in October last year, the Congress won 42 seats and the NCP 41.
Sule said that it was under Chavan’s leadership that the Congress registered its worst performance. “Was he guided by a Mr Clean image or was he pursuing a coalition dharma. And I don’t believe that he was a victim of the coalition dharma,” she said.
According to her, if Chavan was feeling so suffocated while running the government, he should have quit as chief minister and walked out. “If he was convinced about corruption in the government, he should have ordered a probe during his tenure. That would have proved his honesty,” she said.
Sule also welcomed the graft probe ordered by the BJP led government against senior party leader and her cousin, Ajit Pawar saying that people will know the truth as baseless charges were made against her party’s leaders.
“Ajit Pawar is one of the best administrator. He is amongst the few leaders who knows Maharashtra thoroughly and is well versed with the complex issues in the state,” said Sule.
The NCP MP however, did concede that even Ajit Pawar needed to correct himself as also others in the party including herself.
The biggest challenge for the NCP now as to set the party’s house in order, she said. The tag of “Rashtravadichi Masti” (NCP’s arrogance) which has eroded the image of the party needs to be wiped out through serious introspection and honest course corrections, she said adding that the label has caused immense anguish.
“Whether it is true or not, the fact is people have given a massive mandate to the BJP. We will have to introspect on what went wrong? ” she said. The NCP has several top leaders with a wealth of experience and capability and it would be unfair to pin the blame on one individual for success or defeat, she said.
The Indian Express
