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Journalism of Courage
In his short speech on the confidence motion, chief minister Narayan Rane invoked the legacy of three of his predecessors Y B Chavan, V P Naik and Vasantdada Patil. 8220;I will keep their glowing tradition alive,8221; he told the House. No one missed the irony: all three were Congress chief ministers and none are in our midst today.
Later asked to clarify this curious reference to the Congress tradition, Rane took shelter in the lack of time. 8220;I couldn8217;t have named all 14 of my predecessors in two minutes.8221; Pressed to explain, he said he had invoked not the Congress tradition but the tradition of good work exemplified by these three statesmen of Maharashtra. Which should mean Manohar Joshi was not a good chief minister8217;, going by Rane8217;s parameters.
As he walked into the Legislative Assembly, former chief minister Manohar Joshi was greeted with a seemingly unending volley of claps. Joshi, beaming as usual, chose the last row to sit. A stark contrast from the very first seat in the House he occupied till about a fortnight back. Even as he was choosing his seat, members from the opposition benches urged him to take a seat with them. The irony was not lost on Joshi. More was to come after the trust vote. As he stepped out of the Vidhan Bhavan porch and faced the eager television cameras, he was greeted byfire-crackers on the street outside. An unusually long string of phatakas burst by joyous Shiv Sainiks, it drowned out Joshi8217;s voice. 8220;Is this a farewell,8221; asked a hack 8230; Joshi looked skyward, smiled, perhaps at the irony of timing and let the question pass.
Chief Minister Narayan Rane and Deputy Gopinath Munde too provided some mirth, unintentionally of course. Immediately after his team won the confidence motion, Rane was scheduled to meet the press in his ante-chamber. It was a packed room. At the head of the long oval-shaped table was the usual high chair meant obviously for the Chief Minister. Suddenly, a peon wheeled another chair close to it but clearly not of the same exclusivity as the big one. Within minutes, another of the smaller version was brought in to replace the high chair. Patiently waiting media persons could not help a chuckle or two. Then, the peon realised that the two chairs were not at the same height and struggled to adjust so that neither Rane nor Munde would look 8220;small8221;. Heeventually got it right, just in time for the comrades in arms to flaunt their new-found togetherness. It was another story, of course, that Munde dwarfed Rane literally and figuratively.
