Senior Congress leader Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil on Thursday resigned as the Leader of Opposition in the Maharashtra Assembly.
The development comes nearly a month after Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil’s son Sujay Vikhe Patil left Congress and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in March.
.@INCIndia Leader Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil resigns as Leader of Opposition(LoP) in #Maharashtra assembly (file pic) pic.twitter.com/A9m1lRWSSJ
— NewsMobile (@NewsMobileIndia) April 25, 2019
While talking to the reporters, Congress veteran Ashok Chavan said, “Congress CLP leader Mr Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil had offered to resign from the post of the CLP and he had also sent a letter to the Congress president. This letter of resignation has been accepted by the Congress president.”
His resignation came just a day before Congress president Rahul Gandhi is scheduled to hold a public rally in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar on Friday.
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Besides, Sujay Patil had quit the Congress after failing to convince the party leadership to field him from Ahmednagar constituency for the Lok Sabha elections as the seat belonged to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) as part of the Congress-NCP alliance.
Subsequently, Sujay joined the BJP and the saffron party fielded him from the Ahmednagar constituency against NCP candidate Sangram Jagtap.
Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil was elected to the Shirdi constituency in 2009. He has been re-elected in 2014 assembly elections with landslide lead around 75000 votes.