Mumbai: Maharashtra Congress president Nana Patole feels he was made a scapegoat by many in the party and media in last month’s Satyajeet Tambe controversy, following which the Congress legislative party (CLP) leader in the state, Balasaheb Thorat had written a letter to the party high command submitting his resignation as CLP leader.
“In the Satyajeet Tambe episode, I was held guilty by everyone when I wasn’t. Whatever action was taken, high command took it. And we repeatedly said, this (the Tambe incident) was a family feud, not a party feud,” Patole told ThePrint Wednesday. He added that he was not a part of the various power centres in the Maharashtra Congress.
The Maharashtra Congress chief also accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of trying to “break parties” and therefore creating a perception of a split within the Congress.
In January, Thorat’s brother-in-law and nephew — Congress leader Sudhir Tambe and his son Satyajeet — were both suspended from the party, after Sudhir, the official Congress candidate from Nashik for the 30 January graduates constituency poll for the Maharashtra Legislative Council (LC), did not file his nomination for the elections, making way instead for his ambitious son, Satyajeet.
Satyajeet went on to be elected to the LC as an independent candidate.
Following the Tambes’ suspension from the party, Thorat wrote to the party high command in Delhi, expressing his displeasure over the state leadership’s handling of his nephew Satyajeet nomination issue and the political controversy created around the Tambe-Thorat family in Maharashtra. Days later, he sent in his resignation as CLP leader.
Sources close to Thorat had told ThePrint that it was “difficult for Thorat to work with Maharashtra Congress President Nana Patole”.
Maharashtra in-charge of the All India Congress Committee (AICC), H.K. Patil, had then flown down to Mumbai to meet Thorat and other senior leaders. Thorat’s resignation as CLP leader wasn’t accepted.
Thorat was, however, not the only one in the Maharashtra Congress to have had problems with Patole, whose elevation to the position of state party chief in 2021 had been resented by many who felt him to be an “outsider”.
Patole’s first assembly win in 1999 came on a Congress ticket, but he left the party to contest the 2009 Parliament elections as an independent and even joined the BJP a few months later, before quitting and returning to the Congress in 2017.
The Maharashtra Congress chief on his part dismisses the tag, claiming he had always followed the Congress ideology, despite jumping ship, and finally returned to the party. He also claimed that he had worked to bring everyone in the party together and because of his efforts the party was now in second position in terms of popularity in Maharashtra.
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‘No power centre’
“I am not an outsider. I started my career with Congress, but yes, I am also not a part of the various power centres in the state. So I don’t know what others think of me. But I want to take everyone along and go ahead,” Patole told ThePrint.
The Maharashtra Congress chief also claimed that it was under his leadership that the party had climbed to second position in the state, from a dismal fourth position.
“My reading is based on the past few election performances, be it gram panchayat, panchayat samiti or vidhan parishad elections. There were many areas, especially in rural Maharashtra, where the party had been lagging, but slowly people are returning to the party,” he said.
Dismissing differences with Thorat as minor frictions within the party, Patole said “all that is now behind us”.
Patole had announced the Tambes’ suspension from the party, following Satyajeet filing nomination papers for the MLC polls instead of his father. But after meetings with Patil, both Thorat and Patole seemed to have put the episode behind them. The two were also seen at the party’s state executive committee meeting Wednesday.
“Even Balasaheb Thorat said that whatever issues were there internally are solved. So this topic is over now. Whatever action happened, was at the high command level and not at my level, so decision regarding Satyajeet Tambe whether to take him back or not has to come from there. If they get him back into the party, I have no issues,” Patole said.
Senior leaders ThePrint spoke to, however, claimed that Patole’s style of working was aggressive and that he was very vocal about his opinions, which at times put the party in embarrassing situations.
‘BJP responsible’
Patole though denied any rifts within the party and instead blamed the BJP for creating the perception of differences and splits in the Maharashtra Congress.
“BJP is trying to break parties, and to do so, they will pressurise using the ED (Enforcement Directorate), the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation). Breaking of the Shiv Sena, raids on BBC or possibility that NCP (Nationalist Congress Party) is the next target, it is all BJP doing,” said Patole.
He added: “Even Anil Deshmukh (NCP leader and former Maharashtra minister) said how BJP tried to get him on their side. These are not constitutional ways of functioning. But this won’t work in Maharashtra.”
Deshmukh, who is an accused in an alleged Rs 100-crore extortion case, was arrested by the ED in November 2021. He was granted conditional bail by the Bombay high court in December, on a bond of Rs 1 lakh. At an event earlier this week, Deshmukh claimed he had been offered a “deal” to get out of jail, which if he had accepted would have led to the collapse of the previous Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in Maharashtra — a coalition of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, the NCP and the Congress.
The MVA government collapsed last year when a group of Shiv Sena rebels led by Eknath Shinde broke away from the party to align with the BJP. The Shinde-led Balasahebanchi Shiv Sena then entered into a coalition with the BJP to form government in the state, with Shinde as CM. The Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (Uday Balasaheb Thackeray) is still a part of the MVA.
According to Patole, the Satyjeet Tambe episode was blown out of proportion by the BJP since they lost the Amravati and Nagpur graduates and teachers constituency seats in last month’s legislative council polls and Congress emerged victorious. That is the reason BJP tried to destabilise the party by floating theories that all is not well within the Congress, he said.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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