By IANS,
Mumbai : Congress president Sonia Gandhi was witness to some unsavoury scenes here Thursday evening as Maharashtra state unit delegates shouted slogans and threw chairs to protest “poor arrangements” for a meeting to be addressed by her.
The Congress president sat through the ruckus patiently on the dais, waiting for the members to settle down before the meeting could start.
One of the issues the party men were protesting against was that the media enclosure was blocking their view of the dais, thereby preventing them from having a glimpse of their leader.
Senior state Congress leaders unsuccessfully tried to pacify the irritated party delegates. In fact, so loud was the slogan shouting that the opening speeches by Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil and Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh were barely audible.
Sonia’s address to the party delegates was expected to boost the morale of the party ahead of the general elections scheduled for next year. She had addressed a large farmers’ and women’s rally at Loni, near Ahmednagar, around 350 km from here in the afternoon.