CM’s downfall began with Nagpur session

In fact, then it was expected that either Joshi would resign or Thackeray would sack him, but both did not happen for some inexplicable reasons. Subsequently, Thackeray was more unhappy over the manner in which Joshi reserved a prime plot in Pune city for his son-in-law Giris Vyas. Though the a Public Interest Litigation is still pending before the High Court, Thackeray had himself publicly declared that even if a single stricture was passedagainst Joshi, he would sack him.

Even as Thackeray kept expressing his displeasure over the style of functioning of the Chief Minister on several occasions, there was no major administrative or political thrust from Joshi’s Government to please Thackeray.

But the final countdown for Joshi’s removal was seen to have begun during the Nagpur session of the State Legislature last December, where, at a meeting of the party MLAs, Narayan Rane blasted the Chief Minister for spreading the scare of a split in the party for his own gain. That virulent attack on Joshi at a party meeting, the first such, was even then seen as the beginning of real trouble for Joshi, because Rane would not have launched the broadside without a clear go-ahead from Matoshree.

Thackeray was again upset over the manner in which Joshi handled the row over ransacking the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) office in South Mumbai. While Shiv Sena took the view that its activists were not involved in the incident, Joshi wasvirtually silent when Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde detained Sena workers for the vandalism.

The chain of events and the inability of Joshi to provide a Government as desired by him, prompted Thackeray to sack him. The final decision was taken by him on Thursday, when he held a closed-door meeting with son Uddhav and Narayan Rane. Subsequently, the decision was communicated to Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Pramod Mahajan.

On two earlier occasions, Joshi had submitted his resignation to Thackeray. First, it was after the massive debacle of the party in the Lok Sabha elections and the second time, when on March 23 last year, Thackeray publicly criticised the Chief Minister for his friendship of senior Congress leader Sharad Pawar and rampant corruption and irregularities in the administration.

Apparently, Thackeray was not happy with the style of functioning of Joshi, particularly his complete failure to implement the directives given by him in letter and spirit. The immediatecause of displeasure was the failure of Joshi to get a Cabinet nod for a proposal to provide free power to farmers which its ally, the BJP, blocked as economically unviable.

Subsequently, there were three meetings of the senior alliance leaders, including Thackeray, on the issue, but the row could not be resolved. Even at the high level coordination committee of the Shiv Sena and BJP held on Thursday, Joshi apparently failed to impress upon the BJP leaders, the need to give effect to Thackeray’s promise.

At a closed door meeting of the Shiv Sena Ministers on Wednesday, Thackeray had blasted the entire Cabinet for their poor performance and failure to deliver the goods. Then Thackeray had pointed out that though the Chief Minster belonged to the Shiv Sena, it appeared as if the entire Government was controlled by the BJP.

Thackeray’s contention was that no steps were taken by the alliance Government to implement his dream project of providing free houses to the 40 lakh slum dwellers in a time boundperiod; neither it was able to launch the much publicised programme to provide employment to 27 lakh jobless youths in the State.