Congress RS name for Maharashtra is Dalit leader let down by own partymen in 2022 Council polls

BY NOMINATING Chandrakant Handore as its candidate from Maharashtra for the Rajya Sabha elections, the Congress is not only attempting to reach out to the Dalit community, but also trying to make amends for June 2022 Legislative Council election fiasco, when Handore had lost despite requisite numbers on the Congress’s side.

The election had set off a chain of events leading to the eventual collapse of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government after Eknath Shinde’s revolt.

A Nashik native, 67-year-old Handore began his political career as a Dalit activist and was associated with the Republican Party of India. In 1985, he became a corporator in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and subsequently served as the mayor of Mumbai in 1992-93, at a time when the city saw its worst communal violence after the Babri Masjid demolition.

Handore made headlines when, in the midst of the riots in January 1993, Yuvraj Mohite, a reporter accompanying him to the residence of then Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, claimed he overheard orders given to Sena cadre to attack Muslims during the riots.

Mohite’s deposition before the Srikrishna Commission, set up to investigate the Mumbai riots, was instrumental in the commission making its judgment about the alleged involvement of Thackeray and the Shiv Sena in the riots. While Mohite gave testimony before the commission, Handore did not.

Handore went on to join the Congress, winning the 2004 Assembly elections from Chembur, and was made a Cabinet minister in the Vilasrao Deshmukh-government. He was reelected in 2009 but was dropped from the state Cabinet. He contested from Chembur again in 2014 and 2019, but lost both times to the Shiv Sena candidate. Despite his defeats, he held