Thackeray agreed to keep mum in return for freedom

Faced with a Wednesday deadline set by the Government, a senior Union Cabinet Minister telephoned Singh at midnight on Monday with the surrender offer. Thackeray would give himself up to police on Tuesday morning and put an end to speculation and Mumbaiites’ anxieties.

Singh immediately contacted Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and his deputy Chhagan Bhujbal. All of them went into a huddle at Varsha, the CM’s residence. The meeting went on into the wee hours of Tuesday. After around four hours of talks between the Varsha group and a parallel meeting of the Sena top-brass at Matoshree, the proposals that came up were: a) Thackeray would drive straight to the court, the police could take him into custody there and present him before a magistrate. This demand was rejected outright by the Government (read Bhujbal), which insisted Thackeray would have to be arrested at another place and then be taken to court by the police.

b) That least-damaging exit route closed, the Sena proposed that Thackeray would drive to the Mayor’s bunglow (Mayor Hareshwar Patil is a Sena man) and give himself up. But with the assurance from the Government that it would not seek custody and that Thackeray would be out of the court in a jiffy.c) The government agreed to this but with very stern conditions: It would not oppose Thackeray’s bail plea only on the assurance that he would not makeprovocative statements after the arrest or the release.

The Sena agreed and Singh conveyed the Government’s acceptance of the plan at 8.30 am (on Tuesday) to the Sena.

(Thackeray kept his word. While leaving Matoshree to surrender, he tried to show he was calm. His favourite Cuban cigar in hand, he even joked about his Amarnath yatra not becoming a jail-yatra. Even after the unexpected turn of events in the court and his discharge, Thackeray only blasted Bhujbal but deliberately kept the dicibel levels low.)

The Sena had made the surrender offer even a week earlier on July 17 because it wanted to "put an end to the tension in the city". The police could not accept it because at that time the legal processes were not complete. The threads of the compromise formula were picked up again with the arrival of Union Minister Pramod Mahajan on the scene on Saturday (July 22).

The other dramatis personae from the Sena-BJP side were Uddhav Thackeray, Manohar Joshi and Suresh Prabhu. From Delhi, Sharad Pawar also played his part in mediations while the Prime Minister’s office and L K Advani conveyed their view that even if Thackeray was arrested, he should not be taken into custody.

State to challenge Thackeray’s order next week
The State Government will file an appeal against the order of the metropolitan court in the case against Sena chief Bal Thackeray early next week, Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said here today.

Addressing a press conference, Deshmukh said an appeal would be filed in the sessions court on Monday or Tuesday.

"We had not anticipated this type of situation," he said when asked why the government went ahead with the case when it was `time barred’ under the relevant sections of the CrPC." It was the question of law enforcement," he added.

"The law will take its own course", he said when asked about the arrest of city Samajwadi Party president Abu Azmi. The latter was also booked under IPC section 153 (A) alongwith Sena chief Bal Thackeray.

Meanwhile, the Government today appointed NCP leader Mohammad Amin Khandwani as chairperson of the State Minorities Commission and president of women’s wing of the State Congress Rajni Patel as chairperson on Mahila Arthik Vikas Mahamandal, a government undertaking.