Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Sunday met Congress President Sonia Gandhi amidst reports of him stepping down following party’s poll debacle.

Earlier this week, Assam CM Tarun Gogoi had met Sonia at her 10 Janpath residence and tendered his resignation. Party president, however, did not accept Gogoi’s resignation.

Congress faced its worst ever defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and many party leaders including Sonia and Rahul Gandhi had offered to resign taking moral responsibility of the rout.

In Maharashtra, Congress won just one seat in the Lok Sabha elections.

Salary payments at the Naresh Goyal- run Jet Airways continue to be delayed despite the Rs. 2,060 crore infusions by Etihad, and the issue would be raised at the meeting of the staff representatives and chief operating officer Hameed Ali this week, sources said.

The meeting is scheduled for May 28.

The company, which reported a loss of Rs. 268 crore in the December quarter, is set to declare its March quarter and full fiscal financial numbers later this week.

“Earlier the company used to pay salary on the last day of the month. Then the payment date was rescheduled to 7th of every month and thereafter to 15th after the airline was hit by a financial crisis. Unfortunately, this has become a new norm and we are paid around the middle of the month even after the Rs 2,060-crore Etihad deal,” said a Jet Airways source.

Stating that the employees earlier accepted the deferred payment schedule as the company was going though “financial turbulence”, sources said, however even after the Etihad deal, the management maintains that the airline is short of funds.

“We have decided that the day we feel the company is not in a position to pay us, we leave the airline as we don’t want to meet the same fate as our peers in Kingfisher Airlines,” sources added.

When contacted, a Jet Airways spokesperson said salaries are disbursed as per a pre-determined schedule.

“Jet Airways has always met and will continue to honour all its obligations to its employee,” the airline said in a statement, without admitting to delayed payments.

The airline also did not say on what date of the month it is paying salaries.

Maharashtra unit of Congress on Sunday questioned Shiv Sena’s silence over the invitation to Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif for Prime Minister-elect Narendra Modi’s swearing-in on Monday.

In a statement, Congress spokesman Sachin Sawant said his party had always believed that disputes can be resolved through bilateral talks, but Sena and BJP sang a different tune earlier.

“Congress has always given priority to maintaining peace and harmony with neighbours and when need arose, Pakistan was taught a lesson by entering its territory. But BJP and Shiv Sena have always been critical of Congress’s policy,” he said.

Sena has been very vocal in its opposition to Pakistani cricket players playing in India, or artistes from that country performing in Mumbai.

“Arrival of Pakistan PM for the swearing-in is a big event,” Sawant noted. “It was expected that Shiv Sena would make its stand clear on presence of Nawaz Sharif but its silence shows that its earlier anti-Pakistan stand was just for political convenience,” he said.

“Inviting Pakistan PM is not wrong. But had it been done by the Congress, what would the BJP and Sena have done?” he asked.

A special anti-money laundering court here has ordered freezing of Rs 2.5 crore cash lying in a bank account of a real estate firm in connection with the 2012 alleged gold export scam worth Rs 464 crore in Metal and Scrap Trading Corporation (MSTC), a government PSU.

The court has issued orders acting on a complaint filed in this regard by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) which had attached the said amount, lying in a private bank in Mumbai under the name of Ms Skylark Buildcon Pvt Ltd.

The ED had attached this bank amount in December last year in furtherance of its probe into the money laundering case against various individuals of the said firm and Ms Space Mercantile Co Pvt Ltd, involved in this case, after taking cognisance of a corruption case registered by the CBI.

“On a thorough perusal of the provisional attachment order, the FIR and the charge-sheet, the investigations conducted by the ED, and the statements recorded under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, and on careful consideration of the arguments advanced on behalf of the complainant (ED) and defendants (Ms Skylark Buildcon Pvt Ltd)…come to the prima facie conclusion that the defendants have committed the scheduled offences, generated proceeds of crime and laundered them.

“No doubt, the properties attached are proceeds of crime or value thereof and are involved in money laundering,” the court of Adjudicating Authority of PMLA Mukesh Kumar said in its recent order.

The Authority is a judicial body to decide on cases of criminal enforcement action.

The gold export fraud scam pertains to the release, and thus loss, of Rs 464 crore of the MSTC by its officials after six export firms submitted forged and fake documents for the release of the amount.

The CBI had in 2012 arrested the then top MSTC officials, who, it said, knowing that documents were fake, accepted them and released the amount to the exporters causing a loss of Rs 464 crore to the company.

Directors of six export houses – Ushma Jewellery and Packaging Export Pvt Ltd, Space Mercantile Company Pvt Ltd, K A Malle Pharmaceutical Company Ltd, Joshi Bullion and Gems Jewellery Pvt Ltd, Bond Gems Pvt Ltd and Indo Bonito Multinational Pvt Ltd – submitted the forged documents to get 80 per cent of the export value released to them, the CBI had said.

The ED, in its investigation report in this regard said the amount of Rs 2.5 crore lying in the bank account “are proceeds of crime laundered by Ms Space Mercantile Co Pvt held in the said account”.