PUNE, NOV 21: Union Minister for parliamentary affairs and water resources Pramod Mahajan dismissed allegations by Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray that over ambition of a BJP leader to become chief minister ruined chances of the saffron combine coming to power in Maharashtra.``Thackeray's charge does not hold water. There was no way Sena-BJP alliance could have come to power given the results of the State election,'' the senior BJP minister said. The Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party had won 69 and 56 votes in the recently held Assembly elections respectively. Replying to a question, he said the luck of Shiv Sena was better than BJP in the State as it has been able to maintain their seats in Konkan, Marathwada and Vidarbha.Mahajan dismissed the unhappiness in the Shiv Sena camps, who are blaming `some ambitious BJP leaders' for having had created hurdles in the saffron combine's claim to power, as mere passing agony. ``There is bound to be some mutterings when you lose,'' he added.The saffron combinemissed the bus to power not because of wrong calculations after the elections but there could have been some wrong calculations during the elections, he said while adding that the saffron partners should strike a better coordination which will see them coming beck to power.``The present Democratic Front (DF) Government in Maharashtra is full of contradictions. In the Centre they are up for each others throat while in the State they are up in arms against each other,'' Mahajan stated.The minister said the Sena and BJP would work as a responsible opposition as it would be an over optimism to think that the DF Government would fall easily given its contradictions.The saffron combine, which was 20 members short for a majority, could not have garnered support from the 30 legislators who were neither affiliated to the Congress nor the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), according to Mahajan. Fifteen out of these 30 non-Congress and non-NCP legislators had party affiliations which were in total variance to thepolitical ideology of the saffron combine.
