On Tuesday morning, AICC spokesperson Shakeel Ahmed denied the existence of the committee. A few hours later, however, another AICC spokesperson, Manish Tewari, conceded there was an informal group.

“The Congress party regularly conducts in-house exercises to review the functioning of state units and state governments. At times the exercise is done at the level of general secretary in charge and at others, members of the Working Committee are also involved in it. This is something that goes across the board. There is no specific reason, which needs to be read into any kind of in-house exercise,” Tewari told reporters.

In the evening, AICC general secretary Margaret Alva said there was no such committee, although she qualified it by saying: “The Congress president has not told me about it.”

As reported by The Indian Express on Tuesday, the Congress high command had set up a three-member committee, which, among others, included External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Defence Minister A K Antony, to assess Deshmukh’s performance as Chief Minister. Party sources revealed on Tuesday that the third member of the committee was Ahmad Patel, political secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi.