EDITORIAL: CITADEL SHAKES

The first week of July has begun on a sombre note. Two former chief ministers stand expelled from their respective parties, while the RSS-BJP rift has claimed a victim in an office-bearer of the BJP who also doubled as the party chief’s adviser. The common thread in these developments, each otherwise unrelated to one another, is that all the three leaders concerned have attracted “punishment” for their alleged anti-party activities.

Mr Sudheendra Kulkarni’s exit as BJP national secretary, member of the national executive and Mr Advani’s political adviser, is a direct fallout from the Jinnah controversy. Mr Kulkarni has had to pay a price for thinking “out of the box” in charting a course for the BJP independent of its mentor, the RSS. The expulsion of the Asom Gana Parishad founder president and former two-time Assam chief minister Mr Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, climaxes the four-year-old war of attrition between him and the current AGP leadership of whose style of functioning he has been highly critical.

He had to quit the presidentship in 2001 following a bigamy scandal and has had a strenuous relationship with the party he founded two decades ago. He has threatened to float a new party. The most serious of the three developments, however, is the crisis within the hitherto highly regimented Shiv Sena caused by the exit of the former two-time Maharashtra chief minister Mr Narayan Rane who has lost both his party membership and the Leader of the Opposition post in the State Assembly.

Rumbles within the Sena began with the ouster of Mr Chhagan Bhujpal some years ago, but Sena chief Balasaheb Thackeray managed to contain them with an iron hand. The recent exit of Mr Sanjay Nirupam was another jolt. However, Mr Rane’s expulsion may well shake the Sena citadel especially since he commands a mass base and political clout in his own right in the Konkan region and can effectively lead a revolt against Mr Thackeray.

The Sena chief has also to contend with factionalism and inner-party discontent after naming his son Uddhav as his political heir and successor in preference to the more popular nephew Raj. Though Balasaheb Thackeray has predictably taken his son’s side in the Uddhav-Rane confrontation and has put a brave face on the latest setback for his party, it is clear that the Tiger’s roar is progressively weakening because of his dynastic leanings. With Mr Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party waiting in the wings to absorb the Sena rebels, politics in Maharashtra promises to turn livelier in the near future.