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More politicians quit Maharashtra Congress

As the rift widens between Sharad Pawar's supporters and the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress following the <20pawar2.htm">expulsion of the Maratha strongman, one more member of the dissolved Lok Sabha from Parbhani, Suresh Warpudkar, today resigned from the primary membership of the party in support of Pawar.

Another former MP from Ratnagiri, Govindrao Nikam also quit the party. This was announced by leader of opposition in the legislative council Chhagan Bhujbal, who was expelled from the Congress for six years last night by state unit president Prataprao Bhosale for ''anti-party'' activities.

Within hours, in a retaliatory move, Bhujbal 'expelled' six MLCs while his counterpart in the legislative assembly Madhukarrao Pichad, who is away in Kerala ''expelled'' eight MLAs from the Congress Legislative Party for not abiding by the CLP decision to support Pawar. The 103 member CLP (77 in the assembly and 26 in the council) is dominated by the Pawar group.

So far, five members of the Congress's 33 in the 12th Lok Sabha have resigned in support of Pawar, who along with P A Sangma and Tariq Anwar were expelled from the Congress for raising the issue of party president Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin. They include Datta Meghe from Wardha, former chief minister Sudharkarrao Naik from Washim, Madhavrao Patil from Nashik, Sadashiv Mandlik from Kolhapur and Suresh Warpudkar from Parbhani.

Others who have quit, apart from Nikam, are former Maharashtra minister of state Dr Rammanohar Tripathi, former MLA from Bombay Ram Pandagle and former state minister Arun Divekar.

UNI

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