Elections, unity are priorities of new Mumbai Congress chief

Newly-appointed Mumbai Congress president Janardan Chandurkar today said that keeping the city unit together and gearing up the cadre were his immediate challenges ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.
"I met Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, all the MPs and MLAs and discussed the road-map ahead. Tomorrow's function where I will formally take over as the city unit president will send a message that Mumbai Regional Congress Committee is not a divided house," Chandurkar told PTI.
He said that he wanted to send out a message to the cadre that the party in Mumbai had to forget internal differences and project a united front.

During the interactions with the MPs, MLAs and the Chief Minister, he took a stock of the work done by the government for Mumbai, he said.
"We have to project the initiatives to the people, such as the deemed conveyance, proposal of coastal road, Mumbai Trans harbour link (MTHL), Navi Mumbai airport," he said.
Chandurkar said he planned to train the party workers to help citizens with regard to proposed cash transfer scheme, Food Security Act and also sort out problems in Aadhar card scheme. "About 65 to 70 per cent Mumbaikars are expected to be beneficiaries under the schemes," he said.

He admitted that corruption and price rise were issues, but said that it was the duty of the party to inform people about the measures taken by the UPA government and the state government to tackle them.
He also said that it was Congress's duty to protect the cosmopolitan nature of the metropolis. "Mumbai is a miniature India. We should not allow regional parties with narrow, cynical aims to succeed," he said.
Chandurkar's predecessor Kripashankar Singh had to resign following corruption allegations.