Shinde,Deshmukh to head Cong poll teams

In what was clearly a power balancing act among different factions of the Congress in poll-bound Maharashtra,party president Sonia Gandhi on Friday appointed Union Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh the chairman of the election management committee for the ensuing Assembly elections. Only last week,she had appointed Union Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde chairman of the campaign committee. It’s the first time that two such committees have been formed for an Assembly election. With both committees supposed to carry out the same task — to manage elections — the two former chief ministers are set to have jurisdictional issues,according to Congress sources.

This is set to have a significant bearing on coordination between the Congress and its prospective ally,the NCP. While the election management committee under Deshmukh is expected to bear his anti-alliance outlook in the election,the campaign committee under Shinde is likely to be well disposed towards its alliance partner. The NCP obviously has reasons to worry with two election committees of the Congress having conflicting approaches towards it.

Deshmukh has been airing his views against an alliance with the NCP since his ouster as CM in the wake of Mumbai attacks. While the NCP has sought to mollify him,helping him in getting elected as vice-president of the Mumbai Cricket Association,Deshmukh has remained a strong advocate of the go-it-alone policy. He has got vocal support from Prithviraj Chavan and Balasaheb Vikhe Patil.

Shinde,on the other hand,enjoys a good rapport with Pawar. Their relationship goes back to the late 1970s when Shinde had resigned from the Congress to join the Progressive Democratic Front government in Maharashtra led by Pawar. Chief Minister Ashok Chavan,who had fallen out with Deshmukh barely a fortnight after replacing him,and Deshmukh’s bete noir Narayan Rane have also developed good equations with NCP leaders.