Can chief minister Ashok Chavan still pull it off? Odds are stacked against him overwhelmingly, but he may manage to scrape through, according to sources in the party.
Can chief minister Ashok Chavan still pull it off? Odds are stacked against him overwhelmingly, but he may manage to scrape through, according to sources in the party.
His survival would bank on the TINA (there is no alternative) factor, highly placed sources in the Congress indicated. But at this moment the concern for the party is to refurbish its image. For this, somebody will have to pay the price for the Adarsh housing society scandal. What also makes Chavan’s case weak is that the opposition would demand his scalp in the wake of the ongoing CBI probe in the matter.
Not the one to give up the fight easily, Chavan spent most of Sunday trying to expose those guilty and show that he alone is not responsible for the scandal. But not many are convinced.
“If Chavan is let off at this stage, high command Sonia Gandhi will be perceived as guilty of shielding the culprits,” said a senior leader. Moreover, the Congress cannot trigger a series of resignations both at the state and the Centre and thus establish that the party has too many culprits, he added.
To the contrary, the infighting within the state Congress (read Chavan vs Deshmukh/Shinde) has not gone down well with the party leadership. That is likely to go against Chavan in the end.
However, the Congress wants to given him adequate audience to explain his side before taking a final call. Not surprisingly, the two-member high power committee of Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and Union defence minister AK Anthony are closely scrutinising the developments.
Anthony is not known for sparing the guilty. And gauging by his mood, it appears he has already made his decision when he described the housing scam as “criminal offence’’.
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