And if Thackeray's largesse will cost the State Government a neat Rs 650 crore more in times of a crippling ailing economy, the BJP's proposals, if and when they see the light of day, will rob it of Rs 1,000 crore. Not that it matters when the alliance partners are fighting for a piece of the same cake -- the vote of the farmer.

The BJP's move does not so much highlight the sudden love of the alliance partners for the farmers as it exposes signs of a marriage on the rocks. Ever since the drubbing they received in the last Lok Sabha elections, the strain in their relationship has shown, accentuated by the ratherunseemly row they had over the Shivshahi Punarvasan Prakalp (the housing project for slum-dwellers).

No sooner than that row was settled by Thackeray than he himself ignited the next. His sudden announcement of free power to farmers, at his annual Dussehra rally on October 1, was clearly an open bait for the farmers with assembly elections about 16 months away. It angered the BJP, more specifically Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde, because he was not taken into confidence before the announcement even though he holds the Power portfolio.

As Munde started talking about the impossibility of implementing Thackeray's Dussehra gift without a steep hike in consumer tariff, Thackeray and Chief Minister Manohar Joshi spoke about how it would be most affordable if only Munde could arrest large-scale power theft and corruption in the MSEB. Thackeray went as far as to say that one top MSEB official had once offered him Rs 25 lakh for putting him on its board and Joshi asked Munde to stop talking about the issuein public. Munde reacted strongly to both, wondering why Thackeray had not brought the incident to his notice earlier and telling Joshi that there was nothing wrong in talking about his concerns of his department.

The BJP has now taken the view that if the Sena is positioning itself as pro-farmer, it cannot lag behind because it was their party which had launched a series of agitations in the past for the cause of the farmer. ``We discussed at length the pros and cons and now we will demand that the procurement price of cotton should be hiked to Rs 2,500 per quintal and that loans of farmers, up to Rs 10,000, should be waived,'' said a BJP minister. Of course, the official reason they will trot out is that the extended monsoon has caused extensive damage to crops.

Action will now shift to the October 14 meeting of the party where all its ministers will take stock of the political situation vis-a-vis the Sena's onslaught on its rural base.