In a startling repeat of the manoeuvres made by Bharatiya Janata Party members of Legislative Assembly in Karnataka to unseat the government of former Chief Minister Sadanand Gowda, over 40 Maharashtra Congress legislators raised a similar demand against Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Tuesday, saying he needed to go if he couldn't alter his way of functioning.
The new chief minister, if backed by the Congress high command, can give Maharashtra a chance to recover from being looted by rent-seeking politicians, says Mahesh Vijapurkar.
Nearly two months after he was chargesheeted in the Adarsh housing society scam, former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan on Monday moved the Bombay high court seeking quashing of the cheating and corruption case registered against him by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
'There is some deep rot that has set in the Congress party. This requires an organisational surgery.'
Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan on Saturday insisted that he had not given up on the demand for Union Territory status for disputed boundary areas in Karnataka but refrained from raising it with party chief Sonia Gandhi.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan has silenced his critics by successfully diffusing the indefinite auto rickshaw drivers' strike that was to begin from November 9.
Chavan entered the ED office in south Mumbai at around 12.30 pm and came out at about 9 pm, the official said.
Unnecessary victimisation may "reflect in the bilateral relations", the Bombay high court said on Thursday while ordering the authorities to issue exit permit to a Chinese woman who was acquitted in a gold smuggling case yet could not leave India.
In a setback for former Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan, the Bombay High Court on Wednesday rejected CBI's petition to drop his name as an accused in the Adarsh scam case.
A division bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Prithviraj Chavan will take up the matter for hearing on Thursday.
"Let's work it out. There has to be some parity," the high court said.
Union Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh on Tuesday appeared to be laying the blame for the Adarsh scam at former Chief Minister Ashok Chavan's door when he told the judicial panel probing it that the land was allotted to the society after a go-ahead from the revenue department.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Friday said that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is spreading lies and rumours through the social media and Congress workers should wake up to its thread and respond to it.
Laying down a host of criterion for the selection of candidates for the coming Lok Sabha elections, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has made it known that no tainted leader will be given a ticket by the party.
In its internal assessment, the Congress hopes to get around 91 seats, while it expects the NCP to get 49 to 51 seats. The coalition will need at least 145 MLAs for a simple majority to form the government in the 288-seat Maharashtra Assembly. The coalition is confident that it will manage some independent MLAs and small parties to keep its government afloat.
The war of words between Chief Minister Ashok Chavan and Raj Thackeray in poll-bound Maharashtra has intensified with the former saying the MNS chief should act in a movie by Karan Johar and the latter calling the Congress leader "brainless".
However, induction in the NCP-SP will come with riders, asserted the former Union minister.
The government on Tuesday put on hold the district training programme of controversial Indian Administrative Service officer Puja Khedkar, who is under the scanner for allegedly forging disability certificates to clear the Civil Services examination.
Former BCCI anti-corruption unit chief Neeraj Kumar found superstar Virat Kohli's work ethic "matchless" during his tenure with the powerful cricket board.
Former Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and Chief minister Ashok Chavan have reached Sonia Gandhi's residence with 10 independent legislators of the Maharashtra assembly. The was a huge commotion outside the Congress chief house. This demonstration comes in the wake of claims by suspended Congress legislator Narayan Rane that the Maharashtra government did not enjoy a majority in the assembly.
"If Ajit Pawar was unhappy in the Congress-NCP government, he should have left that time itself," Patole told reporters.
India pacer S Sreesanth and his Rajasthan Royals team mate Ankeet Chavan have been banned for life for their alleged role in the spot-fixing scandal in the Indian Premier League, the BCCI announced on Friday.
Expressing happiness that Anna Hazare called off his fast, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Wendesday said the anti-graft crusader's advisors seemed to have a political agenda.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan says government experience is viewed as important in some quarters, but he does not know if Rahul Gandhi joining the government after 2009 elections would have been better for Congress' prospects in the Lok Sabha polls.
It is a question now whether the makers of the statue had comprehended all these factors before making it, the senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader said.
Earlier, 24 deaths were reported at the Dr Shankarrao Chavan Government Medical College and Hospital in Nanded in 24 hours between September 30 and October 1. Twelve of the 24 deceased were infants, a top Maharashtra health department official said on Monday.
Unfazed by the Congress attack over the letter row involving him, Bharatiya Janata Party president Nitin Gadkari on Saturday said that even Congress Chief Minister of Maharashtra Prithviraj Chavan and its state chief Manikarao Thakre had written letters in favour of the Goshikhurd project.
Blaming opponents of the anti-superstition bill for the killing of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan has said organisations behind such acts should be isolated and their activities stopped.
Mumbai Cricket Association joint secretary Nitin Dalal on Froiday said he felt pity for promising left-arm spinner Ankeet Chavan, who was banned for life by the BCCI on spot-fixing charges in the Indian Premier League, saying that he was on the verge of being picked for India 'A' team.
Chavan, 83, underwent a surgery at a city hospital for removal of a blood clot on February 20. He was on life support system for the past gew days, hospital sources said.
The ministry of defence on Friday filed an intervening application in the Bombay high court opposing the petition filed by former Chief Minister Ashok Chavan seeking to quash the FIR lodged against him by CBI in the Adarsh housing society scam.
Kerala Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan accused his Maharashtra counterpart of "lying" on the CVC P J Thomas appointment fiasco to "hide his fault."
There is more trouble ahead for former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan, who is an accused in the Adarsh scam
Chavan, who had to step down as Chief Minister soon after the alleged scam surfaced in November 2010, is one of the 14 accused in the case filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation, which is probing several irregularities and violation of rules in construction of the 31-storeyed building in upscale Colaba.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Monday said the state government will not intervene in the Campa Cola building issue as the Supreme Court has not given any relief to residents of the society against demolition of their illegal flats.
The Delhi high court on Friday gave the green signal to the Election Commission to probe Ashok Chavan and Madhu Koda, former chief ministers of Maharashtra and Jharkhand respectively, in connection with alleged discrepancies in their poll expenditure accounts. A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Sanjeev Khanna gave the order while dismissing the pleas of Chavan and Koda challenging the poll panel's power to proceed against them.
Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray chief Uddhav Thackeray and Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar supremo Sharad Pawar on Saturday said there was no question of taking back those leaders who had deserted the two parties.
Congress MP Rahul Gandhi will embark on a fresh padayatra (foot march) from Gujarat to Meghalaya and during that period leaders and workers of the party's Maharashtra unit would criss-cross the state, Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee president Nana Patole said on Tuesday.
Chief Minister Ashok Chavan, Deputy Chief Minister Chhagan Bhujbal and 37 other ministers were sworn in at a simple function at Raj Bhawan in Mumbai on Monday by Maharashtra Governor S C Jamir.
'Unlike in the sporting arena, where sports federations moved from partisan to impartial referees, in Indian democracy's biggest festival, it appears we are moving backward from unbiased and objective to one-sided and partisan,' observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
