After the NCP’s poor performance in the parliamentary poll, the Congress wants to squeeze its ally in the Assembly poll for Maharashtra. The Congress is even eyeing the key portfolios of Home, Energy, PWD and Irrigation in the next government, though these ministries are presently with Pawar’s party.

But it could be a case of counting chickens before they are hatched. True, the Shiv Sena- BJP alliance is in no great shape but the Congress should be concerned about the Third Front eating into its vote share. The Congress presumed that Ramdas Athawale of the RSP would be its election partner, but Athawale has broken ranks and floated a Third Front, which includes three other factions of the RSP, as well as the PWP, JS and SP parties. Athawale was upset after losing the recent Shirdi parliamentary election and felt the Congress and the NCP had taken him for granted. He wanted to meet Sonia Gandhi, but neither Congress Chief Minister Ashoka Chavan nor MPCC President Manikrao Thakare bothered to arrange a meeting. In the last Assembly election, some 55 to 60 seats were lost by margins of less than 2,000 votes and the RSP helped tilt the balance in several of them.

Timing, even in death

Both Home Minister P Chidambaram in Delhi and Andhra Pradesh Finance Minister K Rosaiah in Hyderabad confirmed the news of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s death at exactly 12.31 pm. The careful coordination was because according to the pundits, this was the appropriate time for the announcement.

... contd.