Congress offers Vasant Davkhare support

Congress will offer conditional support to Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) candidate, Vasant Davkhare, from Thane local authority constituency for the Legislative Council elections. In exchange for support to Mr Davkhare, who is the sitting vice-chairman there, Congress will ask for the post of Deputy Chairman of the Upper House. Mr Davkhare’s term is slated to end on June 8 this year. However, NCP said that the issue would be discussed in Wednesday’s joint meeting between Congress and NCP. Meanwhile, the vote tally shows BJP-Shiv Sena’s score to be much higher than NCP-Congress.

A Congress insider, on the condition of anonymity, said that there was unrest within the party over support to NCP to elect two constitutional posts along with that of Deputy Chairman. It was felt that Congress would get nothing in exchange for the support. “NCP has asked for support from Congress to elect both their candidates, Ramraje Naik Nimbalkar who is Chairman and Dhananjay Munde, who is Leader of Opposition with both being in the Upper House,” said the insider. He added that NCP is also expecting support from Congress for Mr Davkhare’s election. “If NCP’s two constitutional posts and that of deputy chairman are re-elected with our support, what will Congress get ” he questioned.

“There is debate within the party over support to NCP and most legislators are worried about it. We don’t have faith in NCP who has informed us that they will support Congress in the 2018 MLC election when they contest only one seat, allowing us two seats. NCP can breach trust at any time. That is why we should ask NCP to offer us the Deputy Chairman post in the Upper House,” he said.

Meanwhile, NCP state president, Sunil Tatkare, said that both party leaders will meet on Wednesday to discuss the MLC and Thane local body election issue. “We will ask Congress what they want, but, it was decided earlier that Congress will support Mr Davkhare in MLC election,” said Mr Tatkare.

Meanwhile, according to Niranjan Davkhare, MLC and son of Mr Vasant Davkhare, they had support from Congress as well as from Bahujan Vikas Aghadi (BVA) which is why Mr Vasant would manage to win the election.