Congress-NCP relations come under strain

On the heels of the acrimony over the appointment of former Karnataka Chief Minister SM Krishna as Maharashtra governor without consulting the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), today relations between the Congress and the NCP dipped to an all time low with Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee chief Prabha Rau declaring that the Congress would rethink on forming an alliance with the NCP in future.

This came as two Congress nominees for the elections to Maharashtra Legislative Council were defeated.

"The Congress will have to rethink on whether to have any truck with the NCP for future elections," Rau told reporters in Mumbai after the Congress candidates from the Bhandara-Gondia local authority consti-tuency and the Pune local authority constituency lost polls to the council.

Bhandara-Gondia comes within the sphere of influence of NCP leader and Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel.

Rau clarified that a final decision regarding continuance of alliance with the NCP for future election would be taken by the party high command.

However, it was acute frustration and strained ties between alliance partners speaking. In Bhandara-Gondia, it surprised no one that NCP's Rajendra Jain won the elections while in Pune NCP rebel Jagtap Laxman Pandurang was victorious.

Although the NCP had clarified yesterday that it had helped the Congress nominee in Pune while the party contested the Bhandara as seat-sharing negotiations prior to the November 30 elections remained inconclusive, this cut no ice with the Congress leadership that continues to feel that the NCP sabotaged the elections.

The move came as a setback for Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh who had to suffer the odium of the Shiv Sena campaign against a chief minister who allowed a Kannadiga with a definite position on the border row between Maharashtra and Karnataka, to become the governor.

The NCP has launched an aggressive attack on the Congress for not being consulted on the governor's appointment despite being the numerically larger partner in the coalition.

The NCP believes that given a chance Deshmukh may have pointed out the political error in Krishna's appointment. But in the Congress system, he was never consulted on the matter and neither was the NCP. Meanwhile, a virulent campaign by the Sena is proving hard to handle for both the partners in the government.

The NCP says this kind of high handedness undermines the working of coalitions. This is not the last of the tension between the two parties that is likely to escalate in coming months.