Mahajan missed in hour of crisis

S. Balakrishnan / TNN / Oct 6, 2006, 00:17 IST

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Amidst the heat and dust generated by Shiv Sena's brinkmanship, the one man everyone sorely missed was Pramod Mahajan.

MUMBAI: Amidst the heat and dust generated by Shiv Sena's brinkmanship, the one man everyone sorely missed was Pramod Mahajan.
Twenty two years ago, it was Mahajan, then a protege of the late Sangh Parivar ideologue Vasantrao Bhagwat, who recognised the need to consolidate the votes of the Other Backward Castes (OBCs). Though in a majority, the OBCs had a marginal role to play in state politics; it was the powerful Marathas who held sway.
In a tactical move, Mahajan sold the idea of an alliance between the Sena and BJP to the leadership in both parties.It paid rich dividends in the 1995 assembly polls—the Marathas, for the first time, were ejected from office and the Sena-BJP alliance came to power.
Mahajan continued to steer his party's alliance with the Sena over the years, pulling it through several stormy phases. In the face of the Congress and later the NCP, he knew the BJP was not capable of filling up the opposition political space on its own.

What helped was an excellent personal equation with the mercurial Thackeray. Whenever differences cropped between the two parties, it was Mahajan who used his political charm to smoothen ruffled feathers in the Sena camp.
Thanks to Mahajan, the state BJP was also flush with funds and acquired the chutzpah so very necessary in contemporary politics. Mahajan's hold over the state BJP was so complete he was referred to as BJP's Bal Thackeray. This was until the central leadership of the BJP decided to appoint the burly Nitin Gadkari as its state unit president.

Mahajan was always of wary of Gadkari's growing popularity and proximity to key national leaders in the party. As the minister for PWD in the Sena-BJP regime, Gadkari had demonstrated his administrative skills by undertaking and completing a slew of meja infrastructure projects, including the Pune-Mumbai expressway.
Since his appointment as state president, Gadkari has been trying to dismantle the political structure built by the late Mahajan. This has included the sidelining of Gopinath Munde, Mahajan's brother-in-law and former deputy chief minister.
Gadkari is of the view that as long as the BJP is in alliance with the Sena, it will not be able to stretch itself in the hinterland without stepping on its ally's toes. Also, there is the suspicion that the Sena may ditch the BJP and join hands with Sharad Pawar's NCP in time for the next assembly elections.
"Gadkari feels that it is better that the Sena walks out of the alliance now rather than realise later that its ally has been two-timing the party by holding hands with the NCP," said a BJP office-bearer.

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