The Vilasrao Deshmukh government’s first instinct is to buy time. And it has several vital reasons to do so. The government has been continuing in office since 2004 on only one compulsion — to stay in power. The two major partners in this government, the Congress and the NCP, function more like rivals than allies. The Congress is, as always, divided into warring groups: Deshmukh versus Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee chief, Prabha Rau; Deshmukh versus Narayan Rane; and so on. Many in this government are mired in serious charges of irregularities. These include the distribution of election tickets during the recent local body polls to more than one person in places like Nagpur; and unchecked freedom to leaders like Suresh Kalmadi in Pune, where the municipal corporation was lost to the NCP. The Congress-NCP combine has not even been able to clear appointments, like executive officers in state-run corporations — the baseline post on the political ladder. The Congress is facing flak over large-scale irregularities in land transactions involving Wakf properties, with Deshmukh’s brother, Dilip, himself being accused of being involved in a questionable deal.

Of course, the Congress wants to score over its main rival — the NCP — and the demand for the implementation of the Srikrishna Commission’s recommendations are being weighed by both the Congress (which wants to reach out to the Muslim vote bank) and the NCP (whose minister R.R. Patil holds the home portfolio) in political terms. Both the parties have said that the whole issue (of booking Sena leaders) is being examined and that action would be taken wherever evidence was available. It is pertinent to note here that the Congress and the NCP had mentioned in their manifestoes for the 2004 assembly elections that the recommendations of the Srikrishna Commission would be implemented.

In the meanwhile, the Sena and the BJP have gone on the offensive. They are maintaining that re-opening the issue would cause communal disharmony and that the whole exercise is aimed at appeasing Muslims.

The aspects now under the anxious consideration of the government include whether booking Sena leaders would lead to fresh communal riots; whether it would help the Congress (and/or the NCP) in the next assembly polls; and whether, ultimately, it would lead to the polarisation of the Marathi Manoos and Hindus, which would help the Sena-BJP.

The apprehension that the Deshmukh government nurses is that any strong action on the Sena leadership would end up turning them into heroes. This is because, after the 1993 riots, the Sena has masqueraded as the messiah of Hindus in Mumbai and had thus been able to effect an unprecedented polarisation of Marathi and Hindu votes, which in turn helped the Sena-BJP to wrest power from the Congress in 1995.

Another reason why the government chose to delay action on the Commission’s report is the status of the five petitions pending in the Supreme Court, which has a few days ago directed all petitioners to file a joint affidavit within six weeks on whether the government delayed action in a particular case or took wrong action during the riots. Though it appears that the government action would come, as usual, after court directives, there is a rider: the availability of clinching evidence against the perpetrators of violence. On this aspect, both Deshmukh (Congress) and his deputy R.R. Patil (NCP) are singing the same tune — probably because finding such evidence is the job of Patil’s home department and the allies have to hang together. (There is, of course, the possibility of the NCP/Congress falling apart and using the issue for tacit bargaining with the Sena against each other during the next polls).

Ultimately, the political will on the issue would depend on the impact of meting out justice on the political prospects of both the Congress and the NCP during the next assembly polls. The Srikrishna Commission report is, was and continues to be an albatross around the neck of the Deshmukh government. If that was not the case, the Congress-NCP would not have remained inert on the issue in the eight years that the two parties have ruled the state after defeating the Shiv Sena-BJP government in 1999.