Congress suspends Maha ex-MLA Ashish Deshmukh for anti-party comments

Mumbai, April 7 (IANS) The Congress' Maharashtra unit on Friday suspended former MLA Ashish Deshmukh for several anti-party comments and statements, officials said here on Friday.

The MPCC Disciplinary Action Committee met here on Wednesday and took serious note of Deshmukh's recent utterances and "unsubstantiated allegations" against top party leaders like state President Nana Patole and senior national leader Rahul Gandhi.

Among these were his call to Gandhi "to apologise to the OBC community" and that Patole was getting one crore rupees from the current Chief Minister.

"Being a member of the Congress Party, you know the agenda of the current Bharatiya Janata Party government is to tarnish the image of the Opposition by invoking false cases against them. We have noticed that you've been constantly criticising the Congress leadership publicly," said the show-cause notice signed by the MPCC-DAC Chairman Prithviraj Chavan, a former CM.

The show-cause notice sought Deshmukh's reply within three on why he should not be expelled from the party membership forthwith.

The Congress warned that if he failed to reply, it would be treated as an admission of the charges and the party would decide in the matter without further reference to him.

In the notice, Chavan has also advised Deshmukh to refrain from making any public statements till the matter is disposed off.