Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Thursday asserted that the Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and her party are united in their resolve to defeat the “sordid manipulations” of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“Every effort was made to blatantly sabotage the three-party alliance government formation, but we appealed to the Supreme Court and the Modi-Shah government was totally exposed,” she said, addressing a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) in the Parliament House complex.
Gandhi said the CPP was meeting in the backdrop of “what can only be described as a shameless attempt to subvert democracy” in Maharashtra.
She said that the BJP’s pre-poll alliance did not hold because of its own “arrogance and over-confidence”, and also criticised Maharashtra governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari for the early morning swearing in of Devendra Fadnavis as the chief minister on November 23 despite his party not having the numbers.
“The governor behaved in an unprecedented and most reprehensible manner. There is no doubt that he acted under the instructions of the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) and the Home Minister (Amit Shah),” she alleged.
Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray will be sworn-in as the chief minister of Maharashtra on Thursday evening. The deputy speaker will be Sharad Pawar’s NCP, while the speaker will be from Congress.
The three parties formed an alliance after Sena and BJP, pre-poll partners, couldn’t come to an agreement to form a government. Sena wanted that chief minister’s post to be shared to which BJP didn’t agree.
In a surprise development, Fadnavis was sworn-in as chief minister on Saturday with NCP’s Ajit Pawar as his deputy. Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar resigned on Tuesday afternoon after it became clear that the government lacked a majority.
