They called upon Maharashtra Governor P C Alexander to take note of the situation and recommend dissolution of the government to the President. Describing the decision of half the cabinet to stay away from its weekly meeting with the chief minister as unprecedented, the leaders of the Opposition in the two Houses of the State Legislature, Chhagan Bhujbal and Madhukarrao Pichad, said the written notice to the Sena by the BJP amounted to a constitutional crisis for the Joshi government.

While there is no precedent for the kind of situation that has arisen today, constitutional expert Nani Palkhivala told The Indian Express that dismissal under Article 356 could be entirely at the discretion of the President.

``He must weigh facts and decide if this is a fit case for there is no hard and fast rule in the Constitution to take care ofsuch a situation,'' he said.

``The Sena gave birth to the slum redevelopment scheme. But the BJP is unwilling to bear the cost of its upbringing. ``The BJP's Minister of State for Housing Raj Purohit is not approving the new scheme. Moreover, this kind of stand-off between the Sena and the BJP has prevented the Cabinet from formulating a single policy in six months.

``If the BJP proposes, the Sena disposes, and vice-versa,'' Bhujbal and Pichad said.

They said the Sena and the BJP were now staying in a marriage gone sour entirely on account of the lure of office. However, power was not going to sweeten the differences or get rid of the bitterness between the coalition partners. This is likely to have deep ramifications on the future of the government and the State, they said. They called for early action by the Constitutional authorities to prevent the deepening of the impact of this crisis on common citizens.