The Congress’s mega plan of registering a back-to-back win over the Bharatiya Janata Party in the legislative council elections from Nagpur local bodies’ segment has hit a major roadblock, because its official candidate has gone out of reach, dumped the campaign and backed down on the promise he had made to the new party while leaving the BJP amid high drama late last month.

With just five days to go for the polling, embarrassed Congress leaders have been searching for Dr Ravindra aka Chhotu Bhoyar, a four-time city corporator. The state party leaders rolled out a red carpet for Bhoyar, projecting him as “a giant killer in the making” before the party high command. The party went ballistic while putting a homeopath-turned-politician against the BJP’s resourceful former energy minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule. When they failed to locate him, the Congress leaders decided on Saturday to support an independent, Umesh Deshmukh.