Too many cheerleaders

Even after a week after the ignominious loss in the Thane Lok Sabha by-elections, the Nationalist Congress Party is still unable to digest it.

At the NCP headquarters in Nariman Point, state unit president Arun Gujarathi has held a dozen meetings with ministers, office bearers and grassroots workers to identify the “top ten reasons” for the defeat of Sanjeev Naik, son of labour and environment minister Ganesh Naik, at the hands of Shiv Sena candidate Anand Paranjpe.

Notwithstanding the reasons outlined in the election report, party workers feel the top leadership let them down by engaging in trivial tu tu mein mein with Sena, alienating the electorate. The local leaders have registered their objections with Gujarathi about home minister RR Patil ridiculing Sena on the issue of vadapav. They feel it took the election campaign to new levels of ludicrousness.

All the high profile netas of the party — from  union civil aviation minister Praful Patel, water resources minister Ajit Pawar, power minister Dilip Walse-Patil and finance minister Jayant Patil — campaigned for Naik but obviously failed to connect with the local masses. None of them could strike the chord with aam janta. In the words of a senior die-hard Sharad Pawar loyalist, “The problem was we had too many cheer leaders who succeeded in creating the ambience but failed to win the match for us.”
CM takes a T-20 break

Chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh has decided to get into relaxed mood. Undeterred by dissidents who went on an overdrive to dislodge him citing the Karnataka defeat, Deshmukh coolly spent his Saturday and Sunday evenings watching the second semis and the finals of the IPL in Mumbai. Looks like MPCC chief Prabha Rau got the cue and returned to party work. On his part, Deshmukh wonders how long his party and media can drag the issue related to leadership change in state.

Keeping MNS at bay The North Indian leaders in the Congress have come up with a formula not to keep the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena fire burning. As a first step, leaders like Kripa Shankar Singh have appealed to union railway minister Lalu Prasad not to join the issue with MNS any more.

They have also impressed upon their leaders in Delhi not to give too much importance to MNS chief Raj Thackeray. Their argument is that every time a national leader hits back to Raj utterances it helps the MNS to keep the issue alive and take political mileage. A senior minister said matter-of-factly, “Lalu Prasad should have known that chhath puja is performed along the sea or water front, not on a maidan.”