By IANS,
Raipur : The 38 newly elected legislators of Chhattisgarh’s opposition Congress held a meeting here Saturday to elect their leader but instead chose to trade charges over the party’s defeat in the assembly polls, party sources said.
Various factions of the party, mainly the two led by former chief minister Ajit Jogi and state party working president Charandas Mahant, hurled seriosu allegations at one another in the meet, which ended late in the evening, they said.
Amid vociferous slogans outside the meeting venue by Jogi loyalists and also allegations and counter-allegations inside, the meet ended with a one-line proposal passed by the 38 legislators authorising party president Sonia Gandhi to pick the chief of the Congress Legislature Party (CLP), the sources told IANS.
They said Jogi, 62-year-old Lok Sabha MP who was the star campaigner for the party in the two-phased polls Nov 14 and 20 had the support of about 30 legislators for the post.
As the meet began, the two party observers, general secretaries B.K. Hariprasad and Janardhan Dwivedi, sought views of the MLAs on the next CLP leader, who will also be the leader of the opposition in the 90-member state assembly, leading to heated discussions.
Congress general secretary V. Narayansamy, party in-charge of Chhattisgarh who also attended the meeting, expressed his anger over the display of factionalism
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has retained power in the state, bagging 50 seats.