The Congress is likely to rehabilitate former chief minister Ashok Chavan in the Centre as a Rajya Sabha (RS) member.
The Centre has urged Chavan to be patient and silent and not take his battle with the party leaders to the public.
Sources informed that chief minister Prithviraj Chavan’s seat in RS would be considered for rehabilitating his predecessor.
As per norms, Prithviraj will have to get elected from either the state legislative assembly or the council within six months. Simultaneously, he will have to resign as a Rajya Sabha MP.
In a debate on the scam Adarsh in the state assembly recently, Prithviraj said: “The Adarsh land belonged to the state although it was in Defence’s possession. Ashok Chavan was a victim of media trial.”
Ashok Chavan, in the meantime, said, “I have been saying from day one that the land belonged to the state and that the housing society was not essentially for the Kargil war heroes.”
The former chief minister was sacked on November 9 for his alleged role in the scam. But he has been consistently arguing that he is being framed by his political rivals who joined hands with developers to dislodge him from the top slot.
Although the scam has become a handy weapon for the Shiv Sena and BJP to take on the Congress, talks of Ashok’s rehabilitation are inevitable to assuage the intra-party problems in the state unit.
The Centre’s compulsion to rehabilitate Ashok stems from its inability to crack the whip against Union power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde who was among those who gave the consent for the Adarsh housing society during his tenure as the chief minister of state.
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