The Congress core committee deliberated in the Garware Club, Mumbai, and included Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal, Maharashtra incharge Ramesh Chennithala, Maharashtra Congress President Nana Patole, and senior state leaders Balasaheb Thorat, Vijay Wadettiwar, Leader of Opposition Prithviraj Chavan, Sushil Kumar Shinde, Mukul Wasnik, and Avinash Pandey.
This crucial meeting will chalk out a strategy for the upcoming assembly elections in Maharashtra. In the recently held Parliamentary polls, though Congress emerged as the single largest party with 13 Lok Sabha seats in its kitty from the state, the Maha Vikas Aghadi of Shiv Sena UBT with 9 and NCP of Pawar with 8 MPs swept 30 seats out of 48 in Maharashtra.
The meeting will not only take up the strategy for the assembly polls but also Congress’s place in the alliance as they have the maximum number of 38 MLAs in MVA, a senior party leader pointed out. Both the NCP and Shiv Sena have suffered splits since then, which has reduced their numbers. The party will also deliberate on regions, seats, and numbers of candidates to contest in the elections.
While the first session is scheduled at the Wankhede Stadium Conference Hall in the morning, the second one is slated in the party office at Tilak Bhawan post-lunch. MVA managed to win 30 seats out of 48 in the recent Lok Sabha elections, which raised the Congress’s ambition for a better share in the assembly polls. It is looking at winnable seats in Vidarbha, North Maharashtra, and Marathwada, where they fared better.
It was the INDIA bloc that scored over the NDA in Western Maharashtra in the recent Lok Sabha elections with 47.8% of the vote share against the latter’s 43.2%. In Vidarbha, while the INDIA bloc received 46% of the vote, for the NDA it was 37.1%. In Marathwada, the INDIA bloc secured 44.7% while the NDA got 29% of the total votes polled.