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Maharashtra stalemate ends : Vilasrao at the top again |
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Ending two weeks of suspense the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have at long last reached an agreement on who is to be the Chief Minister of Maharashtra. The Nationalist Congress Party, which as the single largest party in the alliance and the State assembly, had the strongest claim to the Chief Ministership decided to concede the office to the Congress in return for three additional Ministers, two of Cabinet rank and one Minister of State. The Congress also sprang a surprise by electing to have Maratha leader Vilasrao Deshmukh as Chief Minister instead of the incumbent Sushil Kumar Shinde who was earlier widely tipped to retain the post. With the NCP also nominating R.R. Patil as the Deputy Chief Minister, both top positions in the State government will now be held by Marathas, the dominant political force in the state. Even before the swearing in of the new Government, the Congress has given a carrot to Sushil Kumar Shinde, a dalit, by offering him the Governorship of Andhra Pradesh.
Observers say that the Congress decision to dump Shinde and replace him by Vilasrao Deshmukh at the last moment was prompted by its anxiety to reach out to the Marathas. Some people in the party thought that the Congress lost ground in Maharashtra because the NCP was able to emerge as the champion of the Maratha community in the state. They thought prefering Shinde to Vilasrao Deshmukh would have widened the rift with the powerful community. Party sources say that Congress President Sonia Gandhi appreciated the concern that Shinde’s choice would have sparked off a Maratha consolidation under the NCP banner seriously weakening the social base of the Congress in the state.
What went against Shinde was that he could not muster majority support in the 68-member Congress legislature party which opted for Deshmukh. According to reports, 47 MLAs backed Deshmukh, a former Chief Minister and a Maratha leader from the backward region of Marathwada. Also, regardless of his pleasant demeanour, Shinde was widely perceived as a weak Congress counterfoil to NCP chief Sharad Pawar. For most of his tenure after becoming Chief Minister in January 2003, he was at the receiving end of the strong Maratha lobby in the state. The loss of the Sholapur byelection, the place from where Shinde was elected to the 13th Lok Sabha further served to erode his authority and political standing.
It is also conceded by observers that Vilasrao Deshmukh is no push-over. Elected from Latur in Marathwada, where the party was wiped out in this year’s Lok Sabha elections, Deshmukh, it is believed, would do better this time than he did in his previous tenure when he spent most of his time fighting dissidents within the ruling alliance. A Central Minister remarked that Deshmukh is the best Congress leader in Maharashtra and can revive the party’s fortunes in the state. He has also the advantage of belonging to the younger generation of leaders.
Vilasrao Deshmukh will have a very difficult coalition to manage. One factor is that the NCP will have 24 Ministers in the Government while the Congress and its allies will have only 19 Ministers. The two major parties in the coalition will have to show a great deal of cooperative spirit if the arrangement is to work.
Another fallout at the national level may be that the Congress allies in the United Progressive Alliance will now be much more assertive. Many of the allies are particularly concerned about the Congress party’s insistence on occupying the Chief Minister’s post even though the NCP had emerged as the single largest party in the state. Some of them think of it as arrogance. The CPI(M) which is supporting the Central Government from outside, and the DMK, had openly joined issue with the Congress in the eleven days of hard bargaining on the issue of Chief Ministership of Maharashtra. The Rashtriya Janata Dal stayed out of the controversy, but its chief Lalu Prasad Yadav made it clear that he would not make the mistake of sharing the seats in the State equally with the Congress in the coming Bihar Assembly elections. He is likely to contain the Congress to no more than 15 to 20 seats equivalent to the four parliamentary constituencies that the Congress had contested in the Lok Sabha elections.
But there are also signals of hope for the UPA government at the Centre. It goes to the credit of Sharad Pawar that he did not endanger the alliance by pressing the issue of Chief Ministership beyond a point. Had the NCP persisted with its threat to extend outside support to the Congress, that would have endangered the Governments, both in Maharashtra and at the Centre. The Congress will now do well to remember that it is on test on the question of political alliances and coalitions. It has a poor reputation when it comes to dealing with independent-minded allies or adhering to coalition dharma. Significantly, both Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishan Advani in their speeches at the National Council meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party contrasted the BJP’s “exemplary” coalition record with the tug-of-war between the Congress and the NCP. The Congress will have to work on two fronts in Maharashtra. For the coalition to succeed, it will have to change its patronising attitude and adopt a give-and-take approach in relations with the NCP. Secondly, it must make people-oriented governance a mission. Only then the Vilasrao Deshmukh Government would be able to give good administration to the people of Maharashtra.
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