Maharashtra Congress expels ex-MLA Ashish Deshmukh for anti-party comments
Mumbai (PTI): The Maharashtra Congress has expelled former MLA Ashish Deshmukh from the party for six years over his public statements against the party leadership.
The order of expulsion was issued to Deshmukh by senior Congress leader and former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, chairperson of the state Congress disciplinary committee, through a letter dated May 22.
The letter said the committee discussed Dehmukh's reply submitted on April 9 to a show cause notice issued to him.
'We found the reply regarding your public utterances against the party unsatisfactory. You are expelled from the primary membership of the party for six years with immediate effect,' the letter said.
Deshmukh had said Congress leader Rahul Gandhi should apologise to the Other Backward Class (OBC) community over his "Modi surname" remarks.
He had also accused state Congress president Nana Patole of being hand-in-glove with Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.
Deshmukh is a former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA from Katol in Nagpur who later joined the Congress.
He was the Congress nominee against BJP leader and now Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis from Nagpur South West seat in the 2019 Assembly polls.
He is the son of former state Congress chief Ranjit Deshmukh.
Last month, Ashish Deshmukh termed as "unfortunate" the show-cause notice issued to him and claimed it was part of a "larger conspiracy" since he had been questioning the style of functioning of the party leaders.
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11 more bodies retrieved from Arunachal accident site
Itanagar (PTI): Eleven more bodies were retrieved on Saturday from the deep gorge in Arunachal Pradesh's Anjaw district, where a mini-truck on which 22 labourers from Assam were travelling fell, an official said.
With this, 17 bodies have been recovered from the accident site, Anjaw's deputy commissioner Milo Kojin said.
He said three more bodies will be brought out on Sunday.
The operation, being conducted by a joint team of the NDRF and Army, resumed at 6 am.
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"The retrieval process was extremely difficult because of the treacherous terrain, and the gorge is very deep," Kojin said.
The operation was suspended around 4 pm due to low visibility and will be resumed on Sunday morning, he said.
"One person is still missing, and a search operation will be carried out tomorrow," he added.
The accident happened on the evening of December 8, around 40 km from Hayuliang towards Chaglagam in the district. On the evening of December 10, one survivor managed to climb out of the gorge and reach a nearby Border Roads Task Force (BRTF) labour camp, following which the authorities were alerted.
Six bodies were recovered from the gorge on Friday and handed over to their families on Saturday.
