Will someone vacate council berth for Prithviraj Chavan?

It has been over two months since Prithviraj Chavan assumed charge as the Maharashtra chief minister.

However, he needs to secure a seat in the state legislative council within the next four months to fulfil a Constitutional requirement.

The Congress’ ally, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), does have a vacant berth following the demise of general secretary Gurunath Kulkarni.

But the party’s priority will most likely be to accommodate Kiran Pawaskar, who recently resigned from the Shiv Sena to join Sharad Pawar’s fold.

A section within the NCP says that the party may offer the seat to Chavan but with a rider. The Congress would have to give the NCP the Rajya Sabha seat that Chavan once occupied.

The Congress, though, seems to be in no mood to strike a bargain. It has decided to ask one of its own members in the state legislative council to vacate a seat for Chavan. What remains to be seen is who will be willing to make a Congress-style sacrifice to show his loyalty to the chief minister? Will he then privately bargain for a Rajya Sabha seat in return?

Gadkari’s corporate concept
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president Nitin Gadkari has ushered in a new culture of auditing work. Much to the amusement of his political rivals in the Congress and the NCP, he has decided to ensure that every elected MLA, MP and official is apprised of his/her report card.

He, too, is willing to be subjected to the audit to restore accountability within the organisation. However, not all members are convinced.

A senior leader said, “On the basis of what parameters can one’s performance be audited?” Many wonder if this kind of audits will help contain intra-party one-upmanship based on power and caste.

Though the idea sounds good on paper, its outcome remains to be seen. A Congress member said rather sardonically, “In politics, theories don’t work. What matters is whether people have accepted your ideology and whether that mass support pays electoral dividends.”

NCP fights Sena-MNS
Ahead of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections, the NCP appears to be getting its claws into the Shiv Sena as well as the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS).

A week after it managed to make Kiran Pawaskar defect from the Sena to join its fold, it targeted MNS chief Raj Thackeray. However, NCP insiders say that the party may go soft on the Sena and become aggressive against the MNS to counter the Congress’ tried-and-tested strategy of using Raj to divide the Sena’s Marathi voters.

This is because the NCP believes its political survival in the Centre and the state will be threatened if the Congress continues to grow. It will be interesting to see in the course of the BMC elections if the NCP and the Congress go at each other or work in tandem to make inroads into the saffron parties’ political terrains.