Congress may blink, NCP man to be CM

New Maharashtra chief minister to be announced after October 23

The battle for the chief ministership of Maharashtra today turned into a war for political supremacy in Maharashtra and shifted into another gear altogether with the two main contenders being Sharad Pawar and Sonia Gandhi.

Negotiations continued late into the night with meetings between the Congress general secretaries. Till the evening there was no clarity on the clinching formula for chief ministership.

In between, Sushil Kumar Shinde flew to Mumbai to resign from his post as the chief minister, fulfilling a technical formality, and returned to Delhi an hour later to continue meetings.

The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) was clear and unrelenting in its claim for chief ministership. Its leader, Pawar, said the basis for deciding how many seats a party had got should the number of seats it had contested on the same symbol. This was with reference to the Congress claim that the three seats of the Left parties and the two independents should legitimately fall in its kitty.

The Congress' best offer was that Pawar's candidates could be accommodated in the Union Cabinet in lieu of the chief ministership. But some NCP leaders cautioned against a deal of this kind, because it would lead to skewed representation of Maharashtra in the central Cabinet.

Also, if all constituents began demanding Cabinet berths every time they won a state election, for the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), it would lead to imbalances in the ministry.

Both the Congress and the NCP realised that this fight was not just about Cabinet or chief ministerial berths but on the question of who should be allowed to control Maharashtra.

Today's discussions revolved around the possibility of Shinde's continuance as the chief minister. It was pointed out that another term for a Dalit as the chief minister would lead to hostility among Marathas, who had, after all, voted the UPA in large numbers.

The issue of rotation of chief ministers "" like the Mayawati-BJP experiment in Uttar Pradesh "" was also discussed. If a Dalit was to become the chief minister, whom the important portfolios would go to was also raised.

By the evening, after extended meetings, Minister of State in the PMO Prithviraj Chavan emerged from 10 Janpath to say the situation was still fluid and no one could say with any certainty who the new Maharashtra chief minister would be "" the NCP or the Congress.

Pawar's supporters said he did not want to be seen as conceding any ground because he did not want a repeat of 1991 where he was piped to the post of the Prime Minister by PV Narasimha Rao and sent to Maharashtra as the chief minister. It could take a day or two for the drama to be played out, they said.