The Maharashtra Congress expelled former MLA Ashish Deshmukh for six years over his public statements against the party leadership. Senior Congress leader and former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, currently acting as the state Congress disciplinary committee chairperson, issued the expulsion letter to Deshmukh on May 22.
The letter came in response from the committee over Dehmukh’s reply, dated April 9, to a show cause notice issued to him. ”We found the reply regarding your public utterances against the party unsatisfactory. You are expelled from the party’s primary membership for six years with immediate effect,” the letter said.
Deshmukh had commented that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi should apologise to the Other Backward Class (OBC) community over his “Modi surname” remarks. He had also accused Maharashtra State Congress president Nana Patole of being hand-in-glove with Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.
Deshmukh is a former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA from Katol in Nagpur who later joined the Congress. He was the Congress nominee against BJP leader and now Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis from Nagpur South West seat in the 2019 Assembly polls. He is the son of former state Congress chief and Former Agriculture minister of Maharashtra state, Ranjeet Deshmukh.
In response, Ashish Deshmukh has called the show cause notice against him a conspiracy for questioning the party leadership.
