Vidarbha Cong leaders threaten to quit

Aug 09, 2013 |

Age Correspondent

New Delhi

Congress leaders from Vidarbha are threatening to quit the party if the high command does not consider their demand of a separate state along with Telangana.
According to a section of Congress MPs, the demand for a separate Vidarbha state will certainly be an issue in the coming Lok Sabha and Maharashtra Assembly polls.
“The Congress will be a loser in the polls if it adopts dilly-dallying tactics,” they feared and said the Congress can win only one of the total 10 seats in the region if the Lok Sabha elections are held today.
Vidarbha was once the stronghold of the Congress whose leaders in the region were known for their loyalty to the Gandhi-Nehru family. Now, it has just four Lok Sabha members, Vilas Muttemwar (Nagpur), Mukul Wasnik (Ramtek), Datta Meghe (Wardha) and Marotrao Kowase (Gadchiroli-Chimur). Union minister and the NCP leader Praful Patel won from the Bhandara-Gondiya seat.
The rest five Lok Sabha seats, Amravati, Buldhana, Yavatmal-Washim (all Shiv Sena) and Chandrapur, Akola (BJP), were won by the non-Congress parties.
While the two national parties — the Congress and the BJP — are competing with each other to gain political mileage on this issue, the Sharad Pawar-led NCP is not opposing the demand.
Some Maharashtra ministers from Vidarbha are floating the idea to launch “apolitical” movement for the separate state under the leadership of Dr Vikas Amte, the son of noted social activist late Baba Amte. This will help making it a mass movement and thereby compel the Congress leadership to create Vidarbha alongwih Telangana state, they viewed. Maharashtra chief minister Prathviraj Chavan (western Maharashtra) and PCC chief Manikrao Thakre (Vidarbha) have yet to take a clear stand on this issue.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/249038" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-4d248a9c6e42ac58df70272bd2366821" value="form-4d248a9c6e42ac58df70272bd2366821" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="86600679" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>