Anna Hazare wave may affect Congress: Minister

Congress leader and Union minister of state for coal, Pratik Patil, on Monday said the party would suffer in the ensuing elections to local self-government bodies due to the anti-corruption movement launched by Gandhian, Anna Hazare.

He was speaking at the party convention for the region comprising Pune, Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur and Solapur districts organised in the city.

Chief minister, Prithviraj Chavan; Maharashtra pradesh Congress committee (MPCC) president, Manikrao Thakare; speaker of the state legislative council, Shivajirao Deshmukh; and state cooperatives minister, Harshwardhan Patil, were present.

The state would go to polls for 10 municipal corporations, 27 zilla parishads and numerous panchayat samitis under them, as well as 168 municipal councils by the end of this year and early in 2012. The convention was organised in the city to assess opinions of party office-bearers in Western Maharashtra.

Wondering whether the party activists would be able to answer them convincingly, Patil said citizens will raise questions regarding scams exposed in the central government following Hazare’s anti-graft campaign.

Supporting Hazare’s movement, the minister said that he would launch a campaign from October 2 to free Sangli, his home district, from the menace of corruption. “Politicians are blamed for corruption but they are few in numbers. The origin of corruption is among the public and it should be nipped in the bud,” he said.

Shivajirao Deshmukh, a member of the Congress working committee (CWC) — the highest decision making body in the party — echoed Patil’s views. He said people saw Ramayan on Ramlila Maidan on the issue of corruption.

Chief minister Chavan said many scams have been uncovered due to the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI). Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and the party should be given credit for introducing RTI to ensure transparency in governance.

Speaking at a press conference later, Thakare said party activists need not be afraid of the impact of Hazare’s agitation or influence of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). He said people have elected the Congress in the past also, when there were attempts to defame the party.
 
Ally is main rival
Congress activists consider the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) as its main rival in the ensuing elections of local self-government bodies. NCP is its alliance partner in the governments at the central and state levels.

MPCC president Manikrao Thakare said the Congress did not get the expected success in the assembly election as many seats were given to the NCP under terms of the alliance. He said the outcome would have been different had the Congress contested those seats.