Buta, Shinde out, Cong begins guessing game

With its two Dalit faces — Buta Singh and Sushil Kumar Shinde— out of their respective Raj Bhawans, albeit for different reasons, ...

With its two Dalit faces — Buta Singh and Sushil Kumar Shinde— out of their respective Raj Bhawans, albeit for different reasons, the Congress is on the look-out for suitable replacements to address its traditional constituency.

Sources disclosed here today that senior Dalit leader N M Kamble, a former president of the Maharashtra PCC, has emerged as a front-runner for a gubernatorial assignment. Kamble’s candidature has surfaced at a time when the Congress is busy building a powerful social combination in the state to counter NCP leader Sharad Pawar.

Apart from the two vacancies caused by Singh’s and Shinde’s resignations, four NDA-appointed governors—Surjit Singh Barnala (Tamil Nadu), T N Chaturvedi (Karnataka), Krishna Mohan Seth (Chhattisgarh) and Amolak Ratan Kohli (Mizoram)—are due to retire owing to the completion of their tenures.

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Coincidentally, two of the names doing the rounds to replace them have a Maharashtra connection. Former Union minister and AICC general secretary Margaret Alva, under consideration for Mizoram, is in charge of Maharashtra. A former MP in both the Lok and the Rajya Sabha, she hails from Karnataka. Her friend, Maharahstra PCC chief Prabha Rau, may make it to the Chhattisgarh Raj Bhawan. The immediate side-beneficiary of fresh assignments for the two ladies would undoubtedly be Maharashtra CM Vilasrao Deshmukh, who is kept perennially on edge, coping with their joint strategic moves.

Former Rajasthan chief minister Shiv Charan Mathur is also lobbying for a governorship. His only difficulty is that the state already has two such slots through Nawal Kishore Sharma in Gujarat and B L Joshi in Delhi.

A section of the party is trying to banish Uttaranchal Chief Minister ND Tewari to some Raj Bhawan or the other. Tewari, on the other hand, is reportedly prepared to shift out of the state only in exchange for a ministerial berth at the Centre. With any such move having wide-ranging implications for Congress in-house politics, Tewari may turn out to be a very hot potato for those handling him.

Amidst all this is the long-standing demand of UPA partners for a share in the pie. The NCP has been insisting on a proportionate division of high offices among coalition partners. Early this week, PM Manmohan Singh and Home Minister Shivraj Patil held a preliminary round of discussions on the issue. The appointments may materialise once Congress president Sonia Gandhi takes a final view of the matter.

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