Senior Maharashtra Congress leader Sachin Sawant has resigned from his spokesperson role, urging party state unit president Nana Patole to give him a new responsibility.
Sawant, it is learnt, is upset that Patole appointed Atul Londhe to the post of chief spokesperson.
Sawant belongs to the state Congress faction of PWD Minister Ashok Chavan. When Chavan had to resign from the chief minister’s post in the aftermath of the Adarsh housing society scam in 2010, Sawant allied with then party president Manikarao Thakre. When the BJP-Shiv Sena government led by Devendra Fadnavis came to power in Maharashtra in 2014, Sawant emerged as one of the fiercest critics of the Fadnavis government. As the Congress party was dejected and hardly visible in state legislature following successive defeats in elections, it was Sawant who kept attacking the Narendra Modi government and Fadnavis government on various policies and raised a number of crucial, people-centric issues. That is why Ashok Chavan, after he became state party president, kept Sawant as the main spokesman of the party.
With a change of government in Maharashtra in 2019, Sawant continued his sharp attacks on the ousted BJP regime in the state and the Central government. As a result, his name was included in the list of persons to be nominated by the governor to the state legislative council. Just when everyone thought that he would take on the BJP as MLC, his luck ran out again as Governor B.S. Koshyari has delayed clearing the list of 12 persons given him by the state government. But that had not affected the fighting spirit of Sawant and he continues to be the sharpest critic of the BJP from within the Congress.
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Sawant was replaced because party president Nana Patole wanted his loyalist as chief spokesman and Atul Londhe fits the bill. Both Patole and Londhe are from Vidarbha region and get along very well. On the other hand, the equation between Sawant and Patole is just cordial.
What remains to be seen now is whether Londhe can fit into Sawant's shoes and take on the BJP with equal ferocity.