Local Cong MLAs twist party high command's arm

Local Cong MLAs twist party high command's arm
SANJIV SINHA

NEW DELHI, SEPT 3: Perked up by the creation of Uttaranchal, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand, Congress MLAs from the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra have threatened to sit separately in the state assembly if the party high command doesn't come clear on the demand for a separate state for the region.

In what party circles view as ``pressure tactics'' to get the high command to support the long-pending demand for Vidarbha, the MLAs from the region, numbering a substantial 30, have planned to pilot a resolution in the coming assembly session, endorsing the state's creation.

Senior Congress leader from Vidarbha and Rajya Sabha MP N K P Salve, who is among those at the helm of the movement for Vidarbha, told The Indian Express today that if the state government didn't adopt the resolution, the party MLAs of the region would be forced to sit separately in the assembly to voice their protest.

The need to pass a resolution in the Maharashtra assembly for Vidarbha's creation comes in the wake of Union Home Minister L K Advani's assurance in Parliament that the Centre was prepared to consider such demands if the concerned states' assemblies agreed.

The Congress high command is yet to come clear on Vidarbha's creation, although after the recent creation of three new states, the issue is threatening to acquire emotional overtones among the region's leaders and people, cutting across party lines. The BJP had made the state's creation an election promise way back during the 1996 assembly polls although the reluctance of its ally, the Shiv Sena, to be party to it has forced it to keep quiet in recent times.

Salve said that the region's leaders planned to meet party chief Sonia Gandhi to impress upon her the urgency of the making the party stand clear. While the party willingly supported the bills for the creation of Uttaranchal, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand in Parliament, it has referred the issue of Vidarbha's creation to an AICC committee on smaller states, headed by senior leader Pranab Mukherjee.

In Nagpur, local party MP Vilas Muttemwar, who too is at the forefront of the movement, said the party leaders from Vidarbha have decided to meet Sonia ``to explain their stand over the renewed demand for separate statehood.''

What has, however, apparently sent adverse signals and set off a panic reaction among Congress leaders from Vidarbha is Sonia's recent remark that the party's stand on the demand for other states would be decided after gauging the performance of Chattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttaranchal.

Maharastha Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, it seems, doesn't appear to be too keen on Vidarbha's creation for obvious political reasons. The Congress-NCP coalition in Mumbai will be reduced to a complete minority if Vidarbha breaks away. Of the 66 MLAs from Vidarbha, the Congress, along with allies RPI, NCP and four independents, has as many as 41. And of the 11 MPs from the area, six are from the Congress while the BJP has the rest.

But this political logic doesn't seem to cut ice among Vidarbha leaders, who call it ``political blackmail.'' ``This logic has been furnished whenever the demand was raised in the past...it cannot continue forever,'' a senior leader from the region remarked.

The demand for a separate state for largely cotton-growing Vidarbha, with its capital at Nagpur, is perhaps one of the oldest, going back to the States' Reorganisation Committee of 1955.