Back to playing blame games

The strain is beginning to tell on the ruling and opposition alliances in the state.

Elections to the state legislative council from municipal corporations and local bodies have brought the fissures to the fore. Overall, the Congress won four of the nine seats that were up for grabs; the Shiv Sena and NCP won two each and a rebel got elected from Ahmednagar. Sudhir Tambe, an independent, won the Nashik graduate constituency.

Ever since the results have been declared on Monday, the Congress is blaming the NCP for the loss of its candidate Jayant Sasane in Ahmednagar and the BJP is pointing fingers at the Shiv Sena for its twin debacle.

While the Sena is accusing the BJP of trying to ruin the election prospects of Ramdas Kadam, who bagged a seat in Mumbai, the defeat of Ashok Mankar (Nagpur) is a big setback for the BJP’s newly-elected president Nitin Gadkari. The party lost the Mumbai and Nagpur seats to the Congress.

On the other hand, the Congress was happy to retain Kolhapur, senior party leader Amrish Patel was declared elected unopposed from Dhule-Nandurbar and the Sena candidate Gopikisan Bajoria emerged victorious from Akola-Washim-Buldhana. The victory of chief minister Ashok Chavan’s candidate, Bhai Jagtap, from Mumbai, was expected.

With many theories doing the rounds, the BJP believes its candidate Madhu Chavan lost because Sena members did not give him their second preference vote. But, the Sena is having none of it. “The BJP should explain why it fielded Madhu Chavan when the numbers were clearly not in its favour,” said Neelam Gorhe, Sena spokesperson.

The blame game was in full force in the Cong-NCP camp as well. “The NCP supported rebel Arun Jagtap to defeat our candidate Sasane,” said Hussain Dalwai, the Congress spokesperson.

Of the two, the Sena-BJP fissure has a greater possibility to end in rupture as both parties are out of power and are talking tough. “It’s high time we approach Sena chief Bal Thackeray and inform him that the alliance is not working. It is better to part ways and strengthen our own organisations,” said a BJP general secretary.

Insiders in the Sena are also warming up to a split. “Even we don’t want to carry the baggage of the BJP’s agenda. We want to pick and chose our issues which concern the masses,” they said. 

On the other hand, the NCP-Congress clash involves parties in power and may be less vulnerable to a sudden split.

The underlying reason for the tension in this camp is the Congress’ efforts to weaken the NCP to a point where it has no option but to merge with it. “The Congress is trying to lure our workers and leaders who are upset with the party to join them,” said a section within the NCP.

“Our political resolution clearly holds the Congress responsible for our poor performance in the parliamentary elections. If the Congress had supported us, we would have won at least seven seats, thus taking our tally from eight to 15,” said a senior NCP minister, who attended the party’s national conclave in Delhi last week. Debunking all talks of a future merger with the Congress, the party spokesperson DP Tripathi said, “We are an emerging party. Where is the question of merging with the Congress?”

With inputs from Pandurang Mhaske & Kiran Tare