India, June 11 -- Former Pune City Congress president Arvind Shinde has demanded action against the party's state leadership, alleging that it facilitated the Bharatiya Janata Party's unopposed victory in the Pune Graduates' Constituency MLC election.

Shinde claimed that despite the Congress having the numerical strength to contest the election, the state leadership allowed the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) to field its candidate, Shrikant Patil.

"Even though it was widely known that the NCP (SP) was likely to withdraw its candidate, the Congress leadership accepted the proposal to let the ally contest. If the withdrawal was planned from the beginning, why did Congress agree to it?" Shinde said.

He alleged that some ...