MUMBAI: Just after the Congress in Karnataka, the BJP in Maharashtra's Latur has repeated the 'Resort Politics'.
At least 39 corporators from the Latur Municipal Corporation including 34 of the BJP have been sent to a resort in Goa ahead of the legislative council election on May 21, sources have said.
Though the party's city unit had been saying that the corporators have been sent for a training session, the location for the training session is not being revealed. It is being speculated that just as the Congress shifted its MLAs to a resort in Andhra Pradesh, the BJP has sent its corporators from Latur to Goa. Some of the other corporators who are supporting the BJP candidate in the legislative council election too have been lodged at a lavish resort in Goa along with their family members, sources said.
Voting for the election is to take place on Monday, May 21 and the corporators are likely to be brought back to the town on the day of voting itself, the sources said.
Amongst the six constituencies of the legislative council that will go for vote on May 21, the Latur-Osmanabad-Beed local bodies constituency made headlines for all the wrong reasons for past couple of weeks. Firstly, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) staked claim for the seat where the Congress had a sitting MLC. After much pressure tactics and negotiations the Congress let the NCP contest the seat, which they offered to a new leader imported from the BJP just ahead of filing the nomination.
Nomination of Ramesh Karad as NCP candidate was considered to be a blow to BJP minister Pankaja Munde. However, in a dramatic sequence Karad withdrew his nomination at the last moment. This was a big blow to leader of opposition in the legislative council Dhananjay Munde. Due to the Karad fiasco NCP has made the election a prestige issue and hence the BJP has decided to secure its corporators, sources have said.