Mumbai, June 27: Three months before Assembly elections, the Congress today replaced state unit chief Ranjit Deshmukh with Prabha Rao, a leader from Vidarbha.

An old hand in state politics, Rao was anointed presumably in the context of the Congress’ disastrous performance in Vidarbha in the general elections and its “below expectation” results in Maharashtra.

The Congress could win only one of the 11 seats in Vidarbha, once a party stronghold. With Rao at the helm of affairs, the Congress expects a much better performance in Vidarbha in the Assembly polls.

“Though the time is very short, I am hopeful of delivering good success to the party in the polls,” Rao said.

But the move to elevate Rao has raised eyebrows. There were whispers that Rao, who has had a stint in the Congress headquarters as general secretary, was rewarded for her loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family despite losing the Lok Sabha elections from Wardha. Shivraj Patil was trounced by BJP rookie Rupa Nilengakar in Latur, also in Vidarbha, but handed the Union home portfolio.

Rao’s detractors today said the state party, riven by inner-party friction and factionalism, would remain a divided house with Rao at its head.

“She is not even acceptable in Vidarbha, how can she be acceptable to Congress leaders in the entire state?”’ a senior Congress leader asked.

“Moreover, when the other parties are going for young leaders we have chosen Rao, who is already 71. There will be a question mark on her ability to lead the party,” he added.

The other three big parties — the BJP, the Nationalist Congress Party and the Shiv Sena — have all gone for young faces. While R.R. Patil leads the NCP, it is Uddhav Thackeray and Raj Thackeray for the Sena and relatively younger leaders like Gopinath Munde handling the day-to-day affairs in the BJP.

Unable to hide his displeasure, Deshmukh said Rao’s appointment would send a wrong signal to the party cadre as she was perceived to be close to NCP leader Sharad Pawar. Rao, who was earlier state unit chief from ’84 to ’89, said she would not be bothered about the controversies and would focus on strengthening party unity.

Sources said chief minister Sushil Kumar Shinde had sought Deshmukh’s replacement. Shinde, who was in Delhi last week, met party chief Sonia Gandhi to discuss the matter. He seemed to be in favour of Rao, a leader who has been in the Assembly since 1972.

Rao could also have been crowned because of a thinly veiled tiff between Vayalar Ravi, the Congress general secretary in charge of Maharashtra, and Deshmukh.

There was speculation on Deshmukh’s fate when a meeting of office-bearers of the state party to be held yesterday was cancelled, said the sources.

Days before, Deshmukh had announced that he had decided to go ahead and hold a meeting despite an instruction from Ravi to postpone it. Ravi had written asking Deshmukh to postpone the meeting, but he insisted that he would hold the meeting as the office-bearers had already begun pouring into the city.

Ravi has also never sided with Deshmukh in the latter’s tussle with other senior state leaders like Gurudas Kamath.