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.