The Maharashtra Congress has suspended former MLA Ashish Deshmukh from the party for six years for making public statements against the party leadership.

Deshmukh was expelled by senior Congress leader and former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, chairperson of the state Congress disciplinary committee, in a letter dated May 22.

According to the letter, the committee considered Dehmukh’s response to a show cause notice issued to him on April 9.

The letter further reads, “We found the reply regarding your public utterances against the party unsatisfactory. You are expelled from the primary membership of the party for six years with immediate effect”.

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Deshmukh has previously stated that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi owed an apology to the Other Backward Class (OBC) community over his ‘Modi surname’ remarks.

He further accused state Congress president Nana Patole of working with Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.

Deshmukh is a former BJP MLA from Nagpur’s Katol district who afterward joined the Congress.

In the 2019 Assembly election, he ran against BJP politician and current Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis from Nagpur’s South West seat.

He is the son of Ranjit Deshmukh, the former state Congress chief.

Last month, Ashish Deshmukh called the show-cause notice handed to him unfortunate and claimed it was part of a ‘larger conspiracy’ since he had been questioning the party leaders’ method of operation.

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