Political circus comes to the Front

The ruling Democratic Front coalition in Maharashtra, torn by internal conflict, can only be described as a circus. Over the past fortnight, governance in the state almost came to a standstill after the NCP, junior partner in the coalition, pledged to teach senior partner Congress a lesson following the dismissal of the board of directors of the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank (MSCB) by the Reserve Bank of India.

While half a dozen cabinet ministers from the NCP rallied around deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar, others stayed away, preferring to enjoy the spectacle from a distance. A senior minister even quipped, “If we continue like this, we will soon replace all the popular saas-bahu serials on TV.”

Meanwhile, the RBI’s action against a bank controlled by the Pawars has earned chief minister Prithviraj Chavan the title of Most Dangerous Man. Six months ago, when he took over the reins of the state, a section within the Congress itself had sniggered about his supposed lack of political understanding while many in the NCP believed the junior Pawar would dominate him in the state’s administration.

Following the stalemate in the ruling coalition, the NCP appears to have resolved to treat the Congress as its ‘enemy number one’. How else can one explain the slogans that emerged from an NCP meeting last week? “Eit ka jawaab patthar se,” said one. Get ready for an “aar paar ki ladai”, said another.

Electorally, the fallout of this conflict will be seen in the local bodies polls beginning in December. The outcome of the assembly elections in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Puducherry coupled with developments in the 2G scandal have made the NCP resolve to consolidate its base in Maharashtra in an attempt to lead the regional forces at the Centre. NCP president Sharad Pawar appears to have taken the mission seriously, visiting several districts in the scorching summer heat.

Though it has put the NCP on the back foot, the Congress does not appear very confident. It believes all talk of single-party rule at the Centre or in Maharashtra is a distant dream. That is also because it believes that the Shiv Sena-Maharashtra Navnirman Sena divide, which worked to its advantage in the 2009 assembly and Lok Sabha elections, may not recur in the local bodies elections (2011-12) or  the assembly polls (2014).

Since 1999, when they formed the DF coalition, the Congress and the NCP have had several showdowns but have averted breakdown as both realise they can only survive in power together. Whenever the leaderships in the state cannot see eye to eye, they take recourse to the coordination committee to thrash out their differences. Since 1999, the DF has held more than a dozen meetings of this committee. While these meetings may not resolve the differences, they do help to paper over them. The latest meeting last week was another such attempt.

This time, however, equations have touched an all-time low. While the NCP’s single-minded mission is to arrest the Congress march, the latter is keen to make its partner eat humble pie. Whether the Congress succeeds in applying the brakes on Pawar politics or becomes a victim of the breakdown in trust remains to be seen.