Dissent open, ally suspect, Cong stumped

The defeat in Solapur by such a whopping margin has taken place in the territory of Western Maharasthra which has been a Congress bastion. With its 48 Lok Sabha seats, Maharashtra will determine the outcome of the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. As it is, the Congress is nowhere in the picture in four states — UP, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.

Unlike in 1999, the NCP did not field anyone against the Congress candidate, Anandrao Devkate, this time in Solapur. And yet he lost by 1,22,817 votes. The outcome is likely to strengthen those voices which have been demanding that the Congress-NCP alliance has to be led by Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra if it is to have a fighting chance to emerge victorious.

And yet, many Congressmen suspect that Sharad Pawar’s people did not put their best foot forward in supporting the Congress in Solapur. They believe that the NCP supported the BJP candidate internally, and feel that alliance or otherwise, Pawar is not likely to do anything which would strengthen a Sonia-led Congress. This can hardly be comforting for the Congress, coming as it does after the way the BJP facilitated the installation of Mulayam Singh Yadav as UP CM and there are reports that he continues to play footsie with the BJP.

There was, of course, the family angle to the Solapur contest. Pratapsinh Mohite Patil is the brother of Vijaysinh Mohite Patil, a prominent NCP Minister. The latter was not seen campaigning in Solapur. The Mohite-Patils’ rivalry with Shinde is an old story.

What is also suspected is a Maratha backlash in Solapur. It went against the Congress and favoured the BJP which had fielded Pratapsinh Mohite-Patil, a Maratha. The Marathas were not happy with the appointment of Sushilkumar Shinde, a Dalit, as CM in January this year in place of Vilasrao Deshmukh. In recent years, the BJP has gone out of its way to woo members of dominant Maratha families.

In the 1999 elections, no party had fielded a Maratha in Solapur, and this had created resentment among the Marathas who constitute around 40 per cent of the population in the constituencies of the region. The Congress had fielded a Dalit — and Shinde had won — the NCP a Muslim and the BJP a Lingayat.

As CM, Vilasrao Deshmukh, who is from Marathwada, had stopped the release of fund for ongoing projects in Western Maharasthra like the Krishna river project. This was one reason why Pawar created circumstances which led to the removal of Deshmukh.

The Kerala victory could trigger similar indiscipline in other states like, for instance, Orissa, where there is a a sulking J.B.Patnaik waiting in the wings. V.C.Shukla has already joined the NCP in Chhattisgarh and is posing problems for Ajit Jogi.

For the BJP, the Solapur victory is a feather in the cap of the Mahajan-Munde team. The BJP has demanded the resignation of Shinde to drive a wedge in the Congress. After his christening, Uddhav Thackeray is projecting himself not so much as a Hindutva icon as a young and forward looking leader.

The defeat in seats the Congress had held in states where it is in power are pointers to the problems the party is likely to run into in forging alliances in the run-up to the 2004 elections.