Ranjit Deshmukh happy at halting 'Rane pattern'

Mumbai, Apr 13 (UNI) Former Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee President Ranjit Deshmukh, who contested the Ramtek Lok Sabha polls as an independent and lost his deposit, today thanked the voters ''who had helped him in stopping the Rane Pattern'' there.

Mr Deshmukh had got 79,638 votes which indirectly helped Shiv Sena candidate Prakash Jadhav romp home by a margin of nearly 32,000 votes.

In a statement here today, Mr Deshmukh, who was twice MPCC president and a minister for almost ten years, said, ''I had fought for the rights and interests of the loyal Congress workers who were feeling extremely marginalised because of 'Narayanikaran' of the party.'' Mr Deshmukh has been averse to Narayan Rane's entry into the Congress-fold and has been vocal about the importance being given to ''imported'' people in the 150-year-old party.

''My efforts will stop this process and I hope that this 150-year-old party will seriously introspect into the cause of decay that has set in the party of late because of lack of internal democracy. It is unfortunate that any voice raised in favour of common people is branded as dissent and the person raising such voice is hounded,'' he said.

He said the Kisan Vikas Aghadi, under whose banner he contested the Lok Sabha by-elections, will contest all the 66 assembly seats in the Vidarbha region during the next elections due in 2009.

Mr Deshmukh, a staunch supporter of a separate Vidarbha state, had floated the Kisan Vikas Aghadi which had contested the Nagpur Zilla Parishad elections too, thereby aiding the Sena-BJP to post victory there as well.

UNI