Ally trouble: NCP-Cong deadlock breaks

The week-long Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)-Congress stand-off blew over today with NCP chief Sharad Pawar meeting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi this evening. That the settlement came on a day when Pranab Mukherjee took over as President helped bring relief to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) camp, plagued with ally trouble.

Pawar has succeeded in getting the Congress to agree to setting up a coordination mechanism in Maharashtra, as well as at the Centre. Moreover, the NCP will henceforth be consulted on all major appointments. After the talks, it became clear that Pawar and Praful Patel would continue to remain in the Union Cabinet; both had boycotted the last Cabinet meeting. Both Union ministers thereafter were closeted with their party leaders to discuss the outcome of the meeting.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Patel, said, “Whatever (controversies) happened during last few days has come to an end.”

The coordination committee that will be set up soon will ensure “cohesive functioning of the UPA” and will ensure that all UPA allies meet once every month to discuss policy and other issues. The committee will be headed by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi.

As for the state, the pre-existing coordination committee will be revived; both Congress and NCP are “equal partners” in the state. The Congress has 82 MLAs, while the NCP has 62 in the Maharashtra Assembly.

This committee will include Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and representatives from the central leadership of the two parties, Patel said.

Significantly, the settlement came on the eve of the Cabinet meet that usually takes place on Thursdays. The NCP had given the Congress a Wednesday deadline to come up with some concrete measures to address its concerns.

Earlier in the day, the Prime Minister, soon after Mukherjee’s oath-taking ceremony, told reporters, “We are ready to discuss with the NCP the issues. In politics, there is give and take.”

Pawar and Patel had kept away from the Cabinet meeting last week expressing their desire to quit for building their party. Pawar and Patel had also kept away from their respective ministries, in the past week.

NCP sources, however, let it become public that the senior Maratha leader had felt “humiliated” at the treatment meted out to him and being overlooked for the No. 2 position in the Cabinet.

A few days later, it appeared that the real grouse pertained to the functioning of the Congress-NCP government in Maharashtra; the NCP was annoyed at Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan not taking them on board for any crucial decisions in running the government.