Will Maharashtra get deputy PM post

Will Maharashtra get the deputy prime minister’s post a second time Talk has begun in political circles that the NDA government needs this post for different reasons.

Former Union minister and senior BJP dalit leader Sangh Priya Gautam had raised this issue recently in Dhar (Madhya Pradesh), saying “to empower social engineering, Union minister Nitin Gadkari should be elevated as deputy prime minister, according to a PTI report.

Mr Gadkari, a former BJP chief, has been close to the RSS. Although he is known as a hardliner, he has good relations with the Congress and the NCP in Maharashtra and some senior leaders of the Shiv Sena. The BJP had seen the return of senior leaders during his tenure as party chief.

If the top brass of the RSS and the BJP decides to have a deputy PM then it could be from Maharashtra as UP cannot claim the post as Prime Minister Narendra Modi represents Varanasi in the Lok Sabha. UP, Bihar and Maharashtra are the major states politically, even for the BJP, sources said, viewing that both the PM and deputy PM cannot from the Hindi belt or from Gujarat. Besides, the BJP has been weak in the southern states as barring Karnataka, it has been lacking a face in Andhra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

The late Y.B. Chavan of the Congress was the fist Maharashtra leader to became deputy PM in the Charan Singh government in July 1979. Charan Singh became Prime Minister with outside support of the Congress (I) led by Indira Gandhi after the Congress’ split.

But Charan Singh did not face the Lok Sabha during his brief tenure as the Congress withdrew its support from his government as he refused to agree to their terms.

Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi,Morarji Desai,V P Singh and Atal Behari Vajpayee governments had seen Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel,Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, Jagjivan Ram,Chaudhary Devi Lal and L K Advani as the deputy prime ministers.

Rajiv Gandhi, P V Narsimha Rao governments did not have deputy prime ministers but this issue had figured when the UPA led by Dr Manmohan Singh was in power for ten years since 2004 . But neither regional parties in the UPA government nor ambitious leaders in the Congress had pressed for this post after UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi had clarified at a press conference in Nanital that there was no need for the deputy prime minister.