LS polls: Kalmadi may not field his family member from Pune seat

Pune: With most opinion polls suggesting that the Congress party may find it difficult to even cross the three figure mark in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, the ruling party has come under severe criticism from many quarters for deciding to field 'winnable' but 'tainted ' candidates including the likes of Ashok Chavan, Pawan Kumar Bansal and Suresh Kalmadi which will throw party's Vice President Rahul Gandhi's anti-corruption plank out of the window.

The party decided to field Commonwealth Games scam accused Suresh Kalmadi's daughter or wife from Pune seat, but with the dissent internally in the local unit of the party, industrialist and political trend watcher Tehseen Poonawalla met Kalmadi and reportedly convinced him not to lobby for a ticket for any of his relatives.

Sources said that Tehseen who hails from Pune and is known to be a very close friend of Kalmadi's daughter told the Pune MP that the 'Kalmadi name' associated with the party at this stage will cause irrepairable loss to the Congress nationally which hopes to ride on the anti-corruption legislations. He should rather back whoever the party chooses as the official candidate from Pune.

Tehseen has, however, refused to comment on the developments saying that these are internal matters of the Congress and he is not authorized to talk.

Sources claimed that while Bansal's name has more or less been finalised from his Lok Sabha constituency of Chandigarh as his name does not figure as an 'accused' in any of the chargesheets and in fact he was named as a witness by the CBI.

The Congress, however, may not be able to give a ticket to Ashok Chavan, an accused in the Adarsh Housing Society scam, and may field a close relative of the former chief minister.