Maharashtra Crisis: NCP, Congress for Peaceful Change-over, but Shinde Insistent on Alliance with BJP

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, June 22: Even as the Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar and the Congress observer for Maharashtra developments Kamal Nath reported to have suggested the chief minister Uddhav Thackeray to name the rebel leader Eknath Shinde as his successor to save the three-party Maha Vikas Aghadi government, the move is unlikely to pay any dividend considering the stand the rebel leader has taken all along.

The suggestion for a peaceful change of power while the MVA formation remain intact was believed to had been conveyed to Thackeray by Pawar when he met the chief minister soon after his emotional address to the people of the state on Wednesday evening offering to quit in the midst of the political turmoil.

Thackeray in his address had underlined that he was ready to quit office “if any of his MLAs told him to so on his face” and had also added that he would have no qualms of leaving the office “if one Shiv Sainik was followed by another Sainik” hinting that the changeover could take place while the structure remained undisturbed.

But even after Thackeray’s address, Shinde remained insistent that the Shiv Sena must come out of the “unnatural alliance” with the NCP and the Congress and should joint hands with another Hindutva party, the BJP, and continue to rule the state. He is unlikely to accept the offer of Thackeray for a quite change-over with NCP and the Congress in place though he still maintained that he had not received any offer from the BJP and no talks in progress over the formation of the next government if the Thackeray ministry resigned.

The BJP too maintained a distance from the current developments in Mumbai as if it had nothing to do with the rebellion which was an “internal matter” of the Shiv Sena, though each move of the rebels, decamping from Mumbai to Surat overnight and again flown away to Guwahati, in both cases the BJP-ruled states, showed BJP stamp behind the scene. Besides Shinde’s insistence, the BJP too after going that far would not allow the Congress and the NCP to stay in power with a mere change of guard at the top.

To hit the chore of Shiv Sainiks since the party founder Balasaheb Thackeray’s legacy was at stake, Uddhav Thackeray in an emotional address said there has been no deviation from his father’s ideology but he was ready to step down if any MLA was unhappy with him. “If my own people don’t want me as Chief Minister, he should walk up to me and say so… I’m ready to resign… I am Balasaheb’s son, I am not after a post,” he said and added, “but can you promise me that the next chief minister will be from Shiv Sena?”

But Shinde was not amused and hit back, telling reporters that it is “imperative” for Shiv Sena to walk out of the “unnatural alliance” with NCP and Congress to save the party and its workers. The rebels in Guwahati besides appointing Shinde as the leader of the Shiv Sena Legislature Party also adopted a resolution claiming that there was “enormous discontent among the party cadre over the alliance with ideologically opposed Congress and Sharad Pawar’s NCP.”

“In the last 2.5 years, Shiv Sena has only suffered and other parties have benefited. Where other parties have got stronger, the Sena has only weakened. To save the party and the Shiv Sainiks, it is vital that the unnatural alliance be junked. It is important to make this decision in the interest of Maharashtra,” Shinde said. He was insistent that the Sena restore its alliance with the BJP and rule the state.

It was not acceptable to Thackeray. “Some are saying that we should go with BJP. But how do we do that. We were with them and have suffered. Why should we go with them,” the Sena chief reportedly told party leaders at an emergency meeting on Tuesday.

The Sena has 55 MLAs, of whom 40 are learnt to be with Eknath Shinde, more than two-third strength to inflict a split in the legislature party without inviting the disqualification clause under the anti-defection act.

The BJP leader and the former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, meanwhile, held a meet with his party leaders in Delhi to discuss the nitty-gritty to stake claim to form government, sources said. To displace Thackeray, the BJP, which has 106 MLAs, needs another 37 — a gap that can be covered by Shinde’s faction.