Will Mayfair resort coninue to ‘haunt’ Congress?

New Delhi: Jharkhand’s JMM and Congress MLAs have been kept at the Mayfair Resort in Nava Raipur of Chhattisgarh. Both the parties are taking utmost care and the state government is also paying full attention. When four Congress ministers were to be called for the cabinet meeting, Chief Minister Hemant Soren himself went by a special plane and brought for the cabinet meet. Despite such caution, the leaders of JMM are not in confidence that this campaign will be successful. One of the many reasons for this is that the Mayfair resort in which the legislators are kept, whatever luxury the resort may offer, has a poor record. The purpose for which MLAs are kept in that resort is not served.

Haryana Congress MLAs were kept at this resort ahead of the Rajya Sabha elections in April this year. Ajay Maken was contesting from Congress’s side and BJP supported independent Karthikeya Sharma to contest against Maken. The legislators were then taken to the Mayfair resort to save them from breakdown. The MLAs returned on election day and cast their votes. But Ajay Maken could not win. He lost by one vote. It is a different matter that out of two or three MLAs who did not go to Chhattisgarh, one of them engaged in cross voting and the other legislator cast an invalid vote. However, the role of in-charge Vivek Bansal is said to be suspicious. Prior to that, before the assembly elections in Assam last year, when the process of breaking up of Congress MLAs started, many MLAs were kept in the Mayfair resort but that operation also did not succeed and many Congress MLAs went to the BJP.