With his inclusion in the Congress Working Committee (CWC), former Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan is back in the reckoning yet again.
Chavan's political career took a massive hit when he had to step down as chief minister following expose of Adarsh Housing Society scam. He had obtained a flat in Adarsh, a residential society in upmarket Colaba in Mumbai meant for defence personnel. After the scam came to light, Chavan had to resign following instructions from party high command in 2010. He was replaced by Prithiviraj Chavan.
Since then Chavan's carrer has seen ups and downs and he was out of favour of sorts for Congress's central leadership. In 2014, he was asked to contest Lok Sabha elections from Nanded. He was among the two Congress leaders who won from Maharashtra in what was then worst ever performance by the party. He skilfully used this tenure in national politics make an impression on the decision makers in the party's central leadership.
Chavan was then made state Congress president in 2015 in the hope that he will revive party's fortunes in 2019 Lok Sabha and assembly polls. The party's performance in hte LS elections took further hit as only one Congress MP got elected from Maharashtra in 2019. He himself lost his Nanded seat to BJP's Pratap Patil Chikhlikar. However, the party performed fairly well in the 2019 assembly elections and won 44 assembly seats.
He was a key minister in the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government but could not leave his mark as intended. His close aides blamed it on the Covid pandemic and the fact that MVA was a three-party alliance. Since the ouster of MVA government, there had been rumours that Chavan could join BJP but he kept denying them and focused on working at the grassroot level.
Chavan came under suspicion once again when he missed participating in a vote of confidence on the Eknath Shinde-led government. He claimed that he could not participate in the vote because he got delayed due to traffic in Mumbai. However, he was very active in Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra and made sure that the yatra got excellent response in the areas that it covered in Maharashtra.
His equation with state president Nana Patole is not great. So the first signal that Chavan's star was on the rise again came with the appointment of Vijay Vadettiwar as Leader of Opposition a couple of weeks ago as Congress bagged the important post following Ajit Pawar's rebellion in the NCP. Vadettiwar is close to Chavan in state politics.
Vadettiwar's elevation as Opposition leader was followed by Chavan being added to the CWC, a body which takes crucial decisions for the Congress party. Now Chavan will have a strong say in distribution of party tickets in Maharashtra at the time of elections.
While Chavan has been elevated, Balasaheb Thorat, Congress' leader of legislature party in Maharashtra, has been dropped from the CWC. This is seen as the result of Nashik legislative council election fiasco where Thorat's nephew Satyajeet Tambe contested and won as an independent candidate. Thorat's detractors in the Congress had claimed that he had tacitly supported Tambe in the elections.
In all, eight Congress leaders from Maharashtra are part of CWC. This is supposed to be one of the biggest contingent from one state in a CWC. Mukul Wasnik, Manikrao Thakre, Chandrakant Handore, Avinash Pande, Rajni Patil, Yashomati Thakur and Praniti Shinde are the other party leaders who were added to the panel.