Congress worker refutes allegations levelled by Urmila Matondkar

Congress worker Bhushan Patil on Tuesday refuted the allegations levelled by her party colleague Urmila Matondkar that the failure of party leadership at local level and infighting in its Mumbai unit created "hurdles and obstacles" in her political campaigning during the Lok Sabha polls.

"Congress workers should not be blamed. The allegations made by Urmila are wrong. Workers gave their best to serve the party," Patil told ANI.

His comments come after a letter written by Urmila to then Mumbai Congress chief Milind Deora on May 16, mentioning discrepancies at local level in the party went viral.

"Urmila accused the workers of not doing the campaigning properly as the reason for her defeat. Everything was fine, Urmila Matondkar thanked me for the campaign. I am shocked why this letter, which was written in May, came up in July," Patil said.

"Why we are not called to give some explanation," he asked.

In a nine-page letter, Urmila had said: "Key functionaries, such as Bhushan Patil failed to hold meetings between key functionaries of the party at the block level and ward level which resulted in complete failure of communication."

"As a result, there was a total lack of confidence and energy in the party workers which resulted in low participation at their level. Kondwilkar and Patil showed total lack of political maturity and disciplined by repeatedly creating controversies and animosity amongst the party workers," Matondkar claimed, while saying that she fought the elections with sincerity and integrity in her constituency.

Concluding her letter, the Congress leader proposed and suggested, "A strong disciplinary action be taken against Sandesh Kondwilkar and Bhushan Patil forthwith and changes are made at the organisational level with immediate effect to ensure a better and brighter future for the organisation."

Matondkar, who contested her debut election from Mumbai North constituency, lost to BJP leader Gopal Shetty by 4,65,000 votes.

The Shiv Sena-BJP alliance had trounced the Congress in Mumbai, bagging all the six seats.