Scion of old Congress family and ex-Maharashtra CM, Ashok Chavan now leaves party

THE DEFECTION of Ashok Shankarrao Chavan is a big blow to the Congress, already beset with the exit of several leaders and given his long lineage in the party.

A former Maharashtra chief minister, Chavan, 66, won his first election on the Congress ticket nearly 40 years ago, and is the son of Congress veteran Shankarrao Chavan, who served in senior positions in the party.

Sources said the BJP, which has been at work since it lost the 2019 Assembly polls in Maharashtra, and has already engineered defections in the NCP and Shiv Sena, also opened channels with Chavan around five years ago.

Since then, several incidents involving Chavan have kept rumours of his probable exit alive. In June 2022, when cross-voting cost the Congress Rajya Sabha and Legislative Council seats, fingers had been pointed at Chavan.

A month later, the senior leader along with 11 MLAs close to him had not turned up for the trust vote sought by the BJP-Shinde Sena government, after toppling the government of NCP, Congress and Uddhav Sena. Chavan had claimed at the time that they had got caught in traffic and were not able to get to the Assembly on time.

Chavan is expected to join the BJP, though he insisted on Monday that he had not taken any call yet.

A former Maharashtra CM, Chavan came to the post in unfortunate circumstances, and later lost it in a similar situation.

He was named by the Congress to the post in the wake of the 2008 terrorist strikes in Mumbai, leading to the exit of then CM Vilasrao Deshmukh. Many in the Congress were apprehensive that Chavan, a relative junior, would not be able to hold his own against ally NCP’s doyen Sharad Pawar, but Chavan had proved his critics wrong, quickly bringing both the administration and Congress under his