MUMBAI, March 19: A rift has emerged between independent MLAs, mostly Congress rebels, supporting the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party (SS-BJP) government and the six ministers of state among them over the meeting the latter had with Bal Thackeray on Tuesday.The six ministers, among them Babasaheb Dabhekar, Harshwardhan Patil and Anil Deshmukh, called on Thackeray apparently to bargain for Cabinet status. Though they got only an earful from Thackeray for their contribution to the Sena debacle at the Lok Sabha polls even before they had a chance to petition their case, the cloak-and-dagger manner in which they went to meet him has riled those of their colleagues who are not in government.
These Independents, who believe they should have been taken into confidence by their ministerial colleagues, have decided to get on the right side of Chief Minister Manohar Joshi instead of risking another of Thackeray's diatribes before he has had a chance to cool down. They plan to meet the CM tomorrow beforepetitioning Thackeray next week.
The rift might cause some anxiety for the coalition amid talk that the Congress is planning to raid not just the Independents, at least ``eight or ten'' of whom campaigned for the Congress last month according to Joshi's own admission but also many of the discontented lot in their own ranks. The Congress's continuing good showing at the grass-roots is said to have deeply worried them.
The fact that the Congress managed to win 176 out of 317 Panchayat Samiti presidencies last week as well as the support of 30 of the 40 samitis headed by Independents is said to have come as another shock to the Sena-BJP which secured only 48 and 35 of these bodies respectively. Earlier, the Congress had made its own local level arrangements with the Sena or the BJP at the local self government bodies to retain control of these organisations.
Now, however, Congress bosses have ordered all partymen to sever all these informal ties, following which they have established control over at least65 per cent of these grass-roots organisations.
Thackeray and Joshi are thus said to be looking anxiously towards the changing arithmetic in the State and may be in no hurry to accommodate the seemingly grasping Independents. Joshi is also said to be in possession of a report which has detailed actually how many ex-Congressmen now in the Sena fold, either within or offering it support from outside, worked for or against the alliance at the Lok Sabha elections. This report is likely to be closely studied before the next reshuffle accommodates any fresh faces from among the independents, the sources added.
The Independents, meanwhile, remain hopeful. It is their contention that ``there is no compulsion on the Sena-BJP to continue with the same old team of Independent ministers if their work has been unsatisfactory''. According to Gajadhar Rathod, who seems to have emerged as their spokesperson, they will appeal to Thackeray to judge for himself the performance of the six independent ministers.
And if hefinds they have failed to deliver, the others should be given a chance, he says. It is his contention that ``there is no compulsion on the Sena-BJP to continue with the same old team of independent ministers if their work has been unsatisfactory.''
Some ruthlessness on the part of Thackeray and Joshi in this regard might be welcome, the independents suggest, in the hope that those from other districts might also secure representation in the two years remaining to the Sena-BJP government.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
