Newly-appointed chief of Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee Charan Das Mahant on Friday drew the ire of Congress Legislature Party leader Ravindra Choubey for hurling charges of conspiring against the party MLAs to “derail” the process of selection of candidates for the November Assembly polls.
Mr Choubey hit back strongly disapproving of Mr Mahant’s remark and described the charges as “fictitious.”
“It is a baseless allegation. No party legislator has ever tried to put pressure on local Congress leadership to recommend the pradesh election committee the names of their supporters only for party nomination for the upcoming Assembly polls. The MLAs are aware the party is their strength and the party will be weakened if they resort to manipulations to get tickets for wrong persons,” he said. Mr Mahant said instances have come to his notice where some party MLAs and senior leaders mounted pressure on party district and block-level leadership to recommend names of their supporters to the PEC for finalisation of their candidatures. He warned such pressure tactics by the MLAs would not be tolerated.
Incidentally, the shadow boxing between the two leaders comes barely 24 hours after they jointly launched a tirade against the disgruntled senior party leader Ajit Jogi for trying to “belittle” them in public.