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THE NATION: BJP-SENA
A Split Decision
The rift in the alliance has reached a flashpoint
but a separation won't be a victory for either
By V. Shankar Aiyar
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| TIGER ON THE PROWL: After months of sparring,
Thackeray is in no mood for compromise |
On Tuesday morning,
shortly after Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Nirupam apologised to Prime Minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Sena chief Bal Thackeray launched a book on Rajiv
Gandhi's assassination. The name of the book: On The Brink of Death. It
could well have been a book on the Sena's alliance with the BJP.
Consider the bickerings and counter-threats.
Soon after Nirupam's apology, Thackeray challenged the BJP: "Don't
threaten me. Jhatka sirf unko nahin mujhe bhi dena aata hai (I also know
the art of jilting). I didn't go to them for the alliance, they came to
me." The BJP's retort was prompt. In Delhi, party spokesman Vijay
Kumar Malhotra stated, "If the Sena feels it is indispensable to
the BJP in Maharashtra, let it break away from the alliance and we will
see." Indeed, some members of both parties say a split is inevitable
-a mere formality.
On the face of it, the common hue of Hindutva
and anti-Congressism make the BJP-Sena alliance a potent combination of
regional and national aspirations. Or, as Atul Bhatkalkar, general secretary,
Maharashtra BJP, puts it, "No two parties are better qualified for
the 'made for each other' title." But the 14-year-old marriage has
been little better than one of convenience. From seat-sharing to sharing
political pelf, the alliance partners have been at loggerheads on many
occasions. Each time the architects of the alliance-Thackeray and the
BJP's Pramod Mahajan, aided sometimes by Union Home Minister L.K. Advani
and even Vajpayee-would trudge into Mumbai's Juhu Centaur and troop out
after an amicable solution.
But as a state BJP leader says, "The level
of acrimony now has reached a new height." The genesis of Thackeray's
outbursts is the loss of power in October 1999. Thackeray believes that
former deputy chief minister Gopinath Munde and Mahajan thwarted the coalition's
chances in the assembly election because Munde's chief ministerial ambitions
were snubbed by the Sena. On its part, the BJP believes that it has conceded
enough to its alliance partner and, in the words of a former minister,
"The Sena's Manohar Joshi became chief minister thanks to Munde's
anti-Pawar campaign in 1995."
Not surprisingly after his meeting with National
Democratic Alliance (NDA) convener George Fernandes, Thackeray again charged
that "a senior minister scuttled the latest attempt to topple the
Maharashtra Government". While Munde and Mahajan have both declared
that there is no real chance of toppling the Deshmukh-Bhujbal regime,
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) spokesman Praful Patel has said that
the Sena leadership "is day dreaming and they have been at it for
nearly two years now". The BJP and the NCP have 56 seats each in
the 288-member assembly, while the Sena has 69 and the Congress 75. Thackeray,
however, still believes that the BJP is deliberately sabotaging Leader
of the Opposition Narayan Rane's efforts to bring down the Government.
Adding to the withdrawal symptoms is Thackeray's
view that the Sena-despite being the second largest party in the NDA with
15 MPs-has got a raw deal in terms of portfolios at the Centre. Thus,
the Sena chief has harped on the dilution of Hindutva by the BJP and needled
its leadership repeatedly. In the past six months, Thackeray has ferociously
attacked the Kashmir cease-fire, the NDA's response to the Tehelka scandal,
the proposed changes in the labour laws, the divestment policy, the increasing
clout of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and the Agra Summit.
In a sense, Nirupam's fusillade in Parliament
on the UTI imbroglio-where he hinted at the involvement of the PMO and
members of Vajpayee's family in the scandal-was the last straw for the
BJP. The BJP leadership sent Fernandes to spell out the ultimatum: Apologise
or else... Thackeray relented and asked Nirupam to apologise but stuck
to his demand for a probe into the role of the PMO. "The guilty must
be punished. It's a question of two crore investors, most of whom are
middle- class people from Maharashtra." Thackeray also scoffed at
the attempt to draft a code of conduct with a cryptic: "We are not
dummies."
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