PUNE, NOV 12: ``Purvi Congress ne basavilele bhoomipujanache dagad aajun tasech aahet, amhala dagadat swarasya nahi...'' (The foundation stone placed by Congress are still there. We are not interested in stones...) quipped Maharashtra Chief Minister Manohar Joshi at a rally in Satara during his recent south Maharashtra tour, perhaps taking a dig at the Congressmen's oft repeated claim that even a stone would get elected in western Maharashtra on the Congress ticket.

The pronouncement, though outwardly referring to the much delayed launch of the Urmodi irrigation project near Satara, set the political tone of the Shiv Sena CM's much-publicised tour of Satara, Sangli and Kolhapur districts, the last of the Congress bastions in the State. Interestingly, Joshi appeared to have struck the right cord with the grassroots, who are fed up by internecine feuds among Congress bigwigs here for petty political gains.

But the shrewd politician in Joshi denied that his agenda for the tour was political. The two-day whirlwind tour, he claimed, was to visit the ongoing irrigation projects undertaken by Maharashtra Krishna Valley Development Corporation (MKVDC), the most important venture of the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party government for development of the region. But the response he received was unprecedented for any non-Congress leader. The ``sweet tongued'' Joshi was elated, as he disclosed to media persons at the end of his tour, in Kolhapur, that he was accorded a warm welcome by the sons of the soil at 162 places and was ``constrained'' to address as many 15 gatherings.

Equally significant was the presence of a number of Maratha leaders from this region. The ideological incompatibility of the two parties and the depiction of the Shiv Sena as the main adversary of the Congress by Sharad Pawar did not seem to stand in the way of these Congressmen.

Interestingly, out of the dozen Congressmen who met Joshi, majority belonged to the Pawar group. Questioned by The Indian Express, one of them conceded that Pawar's receding political graph had virtually left them in the lurch. Many of them wanted to avoid a situation which witnessed sugar barons getting virtually razed under the saffron juggernaut in the sugar heartland, he said.

Yet independent MLC, MKVDC vice-president and a confidante of the CM, Ramraje Naik-Nimbalkar brushes aside any speculation based on the mere presence of these Congressmen. ``All those who came to Manohar Joshi were there because they have a stake in the Krishna waters,'' he insisted. He felt there was not much to read in between the lines. Joshi, however, made it a point to mention the co-operation being extended to the MKVDC project at Neera-Deoghar by Pawar's latest bete noire Anantrao Thopte.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.