In a hung House, it8217;s OK to sleep with the enemy

MUMBAI, OCT 10: Make deals while the uncertainty lasts. It's the underlying principle at work since the last two days as the major politi...

MUMBAI, OCT 10: Make deals while the uncertainty lasts. It8217;s the underlying principle at work since the last two days as the major political parties in Maharashtra explore the possibilities of forming the next government. As hectic negotiations continue8211;some directly and others through ever-willing brokers8211;the process of government formation is looking more and more like a business partnership falling into place. The bottomline, of course, is to extract as much as possible and yield as little as is absolutely necessary.

There are all sorts of deals: short-term ones to assume power right away, deals within deals that allow one faction to get an upper hand over the other within a party, deals that seem losing propositions for both but can be explained by way of long-term strategy, deals that keen political spectators could never have imagined but may just come through. In this business, yesterday8217;s untouchable is today8217;s pal. The big I8217; word, ideology, that could be a hindrance is neatly side-stepped ornever mentioned; stumbling block is the net gain-yield ratio.

The classic one 8212; that may just go through 8212; is the one that BJP8217;s manoeuvre-in-chief Pramod Mahajan negotiated furiously: to convince a completely unwilling Shiv Sena Bal Thackeray to accommodate bete-noire Sharad Pawar8217;s NCP in power-sharing. His line was simple and straight. If we keep out the NCP, we stay out of power. Sitting in the Opposition is unacceptable to Thackeray; it appeared even more suicidal to the BJP which planned to make Mandate 99 its stepping stone to supremacy in the State.

There was a game within that deal but it didn8217;t work out for the BJP. Mahajan and his chief lieutenant Gopinath Munde, aspirant for the CM8217;s chair, saw the NCP as the helping hand in the supremacy battle with the Sena. The idea was to get NCP on the bandwagon 8212; Mahajan and Pawar are great personal friends anyway 8212; and use the achievement to demand the top job in the State. What better way to get around an old agreement with the Sena that thepartner with a higher tally of seats takes the chief ministership? And what better way to put it across than to say it is a NCP precondition that it wants a BJP chief minister.

It8217;s another matter that Thackeray didn8217;t swallow that one and Narayan Rane on Sunday became the leader of the Sena-BJP combine and will be CM again if they form the government. That was the price Thackeray apparently extracted for agreeing to an understanding with the NCP or aligning with a part of it. 8220;I had sounded off senior Sena people about a BJP-Pawar understanding some weeks back. I could see it happening,8221; says a businessman known for his proximity to the Sena.

Take the NCP in itself. With 58 seats and a handful more from allies, it8217;s still a good distance away from the Congress tally of 75 plus, a few from its allies. Yet, when the two parties finally talked of a possible alliance, it didn8217;t stop NCP state chief Chhagan Bhujbal from demanding the CM8217;s job as price for NCP8217;s support to the Congress. 8220;We must put forthwhat we want,8221; said a senior NCP leader.

Just as the Congress decided to not push its one-point agenda if it could get NCP support: to demand regret or apology from the latter for making a hue-and-cry about Sonia Gandhi8217;s foreign origin. Anyone who even dared to mention this in the Congress party backroom was swiftly chided into silence by Pradesh Congress Committee president Prataprao Bhosale. 8220;Let the past be there for a while,8221; he is believed to have remarked.

Story continues below this ad

The mother-of-all-deals, as it were, was the one that Pawar tried to crack simultaneously in New Delhi and Mumbai. To negotiate himself or his fledgling party into power in either place, he needs to hand-shake with the BJP. Never mind his repeated assertions that the NCP will stay equidistant from both the Congress as well as the BJP. He said that when he saw a dream run for the NCP; the dream is now dead. 8220;I am not surprised about Pawar8217;s moves. Look at this as a simple business partnership. BJP needs him in Mumbai and he could do with BJPbacking in Delhi. Capitalise on strengths, that8217;s what he is up to,8221; says a key man who is go-between the two. If it goes through, Pawar will effectively share power with Sena but then, the impossible doesn8217;t always remain so.

No one involved in the wheeling-dealing even wants to hazard a guess at the cost of any of the deals but everyone believes there are big figures at stake. But what8217;s a few crores here and there if you get a chance to house in Mantralaya for the next few years?