It appears the PM had declined to receive a message from Mr Thackeray to save alliance
Indian President Pranab Mukherjee, eleventh from left, poses for photographs with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, twelfth left, Vice President Hamid Ansari, tenth left and the newly sworn in ministers at the presidential palace in New Delhi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first Cabinet expansion on Sunday will be remembered more for the deepening of the BJP’s schism with the Shiv Sena, its oldest ally and kindred Hindutva political formation, although of a regional variety, than the quality of talent, or the lack of it, on display at the swearing-in at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The Shiv Sena has not yet withdrawn Anant Geete, its lone representative in the Modi government, but the Maharashtra party refused to allow another Sena man, Anil Desai, to take the oath as a minister of state on Sunday.
Mr Desai arrived in New Delhi to be inducted into the government, but hotfooted it back to Mumbai from Delhi airport on getting instructions from his chief, Uddhav Thackeray. It appears the PM had declined to receive a message from Mr Thackeray on Saturday on the subject of a likely arrangement in Maharashtra between the two Hindutva parties, and that hasn’t helped the relationship any. It must have been a stab for Mr Thackeray to learn that Mr Modi allowed Suresh Prabhu, who has had a long association with the Sena and was a Sena quota minister in the first NDA government of Atal Behari Vajpayee, to join his government on a BJP “ticket”, as it were.
At a Sunday press conference in Mumbai, the Sena supremo said his party would sit in the Opposition in the Maharashtra Assembly in case the BJP accepted the NCP’s support to muster a majority in the confidence vote expected later this week. This means the Sena would like the BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis to run a minority government in Maharashtra, and risk all that goes with the scenario, if the BJP wasn’t ready to take the Sena on board. Clearly, these are uncertain times for the saffron combine.
As for the expansion of the council of ministers, two features stand out. The talent cupboard in the BJP parliamentary party is bare. Goa CM Manohar Parrikar had to be wrenched out of his state to be brought to the Centre. Also, two of the four Cabinet ministers sworn in are turncoats — Birendra Singh from the Congress and Mr Prabhu from the Sena. The other noteworthy feature of the expansion is that the bulk of new entrants are from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, electorally among the most significant states where Assembly elections are due in the next two years.
( Source : dc )
Next Story
