Click to play videoNew Delhi: A week after Mumbai attacks the Congress has finally asked Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh to resign.
The decision to ask Deshmukh to put in his papers came on Wednesday night after Congress leader in charge of Maharashtra and Defence Minister AK Antony met party president Sonia Gandhi.
Deshmukh will finally bow out of office more than three days after he made a casual appearance along with Bollywood director Ramgopal Varma at Taj hotel, one of the the sites of the Mumbai terror attacks.
Antony said the new chief minister is likely to be named on Thursday.
But who will be Vilasrao Deshmukh's successor?
India's grand old party has been in a limbo, unable to remove a chief minister who had let his state experience at least six major terror attacks with Mumbai alone witnessing three of them.
Sonia was reportedly angry with the sight of Deshmukh basking in Bollywood company at the Taj even as at another time, the party would have relished the sight of a slighted Kerala Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan following his insulting remarks against slain National Security Guard commando Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan.
It's an unenviable situation for the Congress. While it is watching with glee the discomfort of Kerala Chief Minister, it is aware that its situation in Maharashtra is no better.
On Wednesday, there were many more parleys, more discussions and the result was the same stalemate.
“Whosoever are found to be accountable will be held accountable and responsible,” was all Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said.
Congress knows that Mumbai is seething with anger against politicians. Yet the party's indecision stems from the fact that it has failed to reach a consensus with its coalition partner the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on who should be Deshmukh's successor.
Prithviraj Chavan, once a frontrunner was rejected by NCP supremo Sharad Pawar because he too was a Maratha like Pawar. Sushil Kumar Shinde lost out as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is believed to be not too keen to lose a Cabinet Minister.
Others in the race like Ashok Chavan and Narayan Rane are believed to be no match for Deshmukh.
Congress's problem is that it needs to have a chief minister who can counter Pawar's shrewd political sense and an administratively inefficient Deshmukh seems efficient enough to deal with Pawar
The indecision means that the moral high ground the party was hoping to ride on, may slip.
Deshmukh may have not get the backing of Rahul Gandhi too, who met Antony just like Sonia is upset at the Chief Minister's repeated indiscretions.
So while Mumbai is mourning its dead, the Congress doesn't know how bring back a dead administration to life.
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