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Poor coordination led to alliance's debacle in Maharashtra, admits BJP chief

Maharashtra Bharatiya Janata Party president Suryabhan Wahadane admitted that there was not enough co-ordination between the Shiv Sena and his party on the eve of the general election which led to the alliance's poor performance in Maharashtra. This was one of the reasons why the alliance could not consolidate the gains of its three-year rule in the state, he said.

It was necessary to take a final decision about the alliance government's policies, schemes, and programme implementation after arriving at a consensus. A proper level of consensus could not be arrived at, Wahadane confessed while speaking at a press conference in Bombay. Being a two-party government, it was necessary to have an understanding and consensus both at the party and government levels, he said.

Wahadane regretted that the co-ordination committee appointed for appraising the alliance government's performance could not meet as often as they wanted. However, he sounded optimistic about reinvigorating the committee by personally taking a lead in this matter.

During the state BJP working committee meeting, it was accepted that party workers were unhappy with the BJP ministers and the way ordinary party worker was sidelined. There was a complaint that four names suggested by the party workers for inclusion in the co-ordination committee were not accepted by the ministers, he said.

Wahadane observed that like the Congress, the BJP-Sena was also trying to forge its own social and political equations, although the Congress has succeeded in its efforts before the election. Besides, unseasonal rains, crop diseases and hailstorms caused a lot of difficulty to the farmers which showed in the vote against the government. The bureaucratic network misinterpreted the government orders and started implementing the small savings scheme through force, which led to general discontent among the people, he said.

However, after a thorough post-mortem and introspection on the factors that led to the alliance's debacle in the Lok Sabha election, the BJP has chalked out a strategy to rejuvenate the alliance in Maharashtra. Two committees have been appointed to chalk out a programme to implement policies and develop mutual consensus at the party and government levels.

A committee to suggest programmes to be initiated at the government level comprises Suryabhan Wahadane, Gopinath Munde, N S Pharande, Anna Dange, Pandurang Phundkar, Nitin Gadkari, Prakash Javdekar, Eknath Khadse, Haribhau Bagade, Nishigandha Mogal and Union Minister of State for Railways Ram Naik.

Another committee appointed to advise the party includes Ram Kapse, Vinod Tawde, Lingaraj Walval, Shobhatai Thite, Tarique Qureshi, Vijay Girkar, Kishor Deshpande Dr Shantaram Karmalkar and Sharad Kulkarni. Both the committees will submit their reports within a month, Wahadane said.

Compiled from the Marathi press by Prasanna Zore

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