President Pratibha Patil’s son Rajendra Shekhawat may have won the Congress nomination for the Amravati Assembly seat in Maharashtra but here on the ground, there is very little he can cheer about.

Almost the entire local Congress leadership — from the block to the corporation level — appear to be rallying behind Sunil Deshmukh, sitting MLA and Minister who announced his candidature as an Independent after the party ignored him to accommodate Shekhawat.

Of the 21 Congress corporators, all but one — the only exception being Shekhawat’s brother Bablu — say they are with Deshmukh “come what may”. To back that claim, they held a meeting with Deshmukh today and said they were ready to face the consequences of rising in rebellion. A day before the filing of nomination papers, workers crowded Deshmukh’s campaign office while Shekhawat’s camp at the city Congress office wore a deserted look.

There is anger in the Deshmukh camp over the “shameless use of power” that ensured a nomination for Shekhawat aka Raosaheb. “What has the Shekhawat family done for Amravati? Devisingh Shekhawat was an MLA. Pratibhatai was a Minister for so many years. It took 20 years for the government to clear the Upper Wardha project that supplies water to the city though she was the Irrigation Minister. Deshmukh started work on 15 different projects in his ten years,” said District Central Cooperative Bank director Bharat Deshmukh.

“What is Raosaheb’s claim to fame? The president of an educational institute he got in inheritance?” asked Suresh Sorge, a member of the city Congress committee, referring to the Vidyabharati Shikhshan Prasarak Mandal. “Unlike most Vidarbha politicians, Deshmukh doesn’t own any educational institute and has a clean image,” he said.

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