New Delhi: The end to the Maharashtra impasse now seems to be insight. Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar is set to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Sunday in the national capital with the Common Minimum Programme (CMP).
The Congress, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Shiv Sena had agreed ‘in principle’ to form the government in the state after the pre-election alliance of Bhartaiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena broke up.
Insiders claim that most of the contentious issues have been sorted and final touches are being given to the CMP. The meeting on Sunday will put a stamp of approval of the Congress too and will pave way for staking claim to form the government with support letters of all the three parties.
Sources say that there is no difference of opinion amongst all the three parties over the post of chief minister. It has already been decided that the post will go to the Shiv Sena.
The Congress is all set to have its speaker in place. While the post of deputy chief minister most likely will go to the NCP. The division of portfolios is almost final with no major hitch coming during the talks.
The only bone of contention was that the Shiv Sena that has been an ultra right party will have to tone down its original version.
Instead it will have to follow the ‘coalition dharma’ as agreed upon in the Common Minimum Programme. On the other hand the Shiv Sena has also insisted the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) will also refrain from ‘minority appeasement’.
The proposed government will majorly concentrate on governance and leave out issues of Veer Savarkar or Nathuram Godse.
The Shiv Sena had reached out to the Congress to extend support to it. Responding to the call the Congress had sent a three member delegation to Mumbai to first speak with its pre-poll ally the NCP. After meeting the NCP, Congress President’s aide Mr. Ahmed Patel who was also the part of the delegation met with Shiv Sena chief Mr. Uddhav Thackeray for preliminary talks. After the preliminary talks all the three parties deputed members to work on the CMP so as to iron out the rough edges. Both the NCP and the Congress were under pressure from their local leaders to form an alliance with the Shiv Sena and be part of the government. A Congress leader on condition of anonymity told this newspaper that if all goes well the prospective alliance could ‘stake claim to form the government early next week’.
The BJP, which won the maximum 105 seats in the 288- member House, declined to stake claim to the form government, as its alliance partner Shiv Sena (56) refused to lend support. The Shiv Sena and the NCP (54), too, couldn’t muster requisite numbers. The Uddhav Thackeray-led party reached out to the NCP and the Congress, which has 44 MLAs, for government formation after the BJP refused to accept its demand for sharing the chief minister’s post.
