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Mahajan admits to tensions between Sena and BJP

All is not well in the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance in Maharashtra, admits BJP general secretary and architect of the alliance, Pramod Mahajan.

Speaking at a 'meet-the-press' programme organised by the Pune Union of Working Journalists on Thursday evening, Mahajan admitted that there were some differences between the alliance partners. ''I will not say that all the differences have been fully resolved,'' he remarked.

In a long association between two parties, there is bound to be some bitterness, Mahajan said, responding to queries on his meeting with Sena chief Bal Thackeray in Bombay earlier in the day.

A little bit of ego and personal clashes do exist between the two alliance partners, the BJP leader said, adding that some way has to be found out to sort out the differences.

Mahajan said though many issues including the Tata Airlines project were discussed during the meeting, he, however, did not not disclose other topics discussed.

He termed as totally ''false, absurd, baseless and to a certain extent mischievous'', an article by Sena MP Sanjay Nirupam in the party daily Saamna which blamed Mahajan for the Tatas' decision to withdraw from the project.

''I challenge Nirupam to prove even one sentence of mine opposing the Tata project,'' Mahajan said.

The Sena eveninger Dopahar Ka Saamna has already expressed its regret over the article, Mahajan informed reporters, and said Thackeray had dissociated himself from it.

Mahajan said a parliamentary committee on civil aviation in 1993 had unanimously recommended that there should be no foreign investment in a private airline operating in the country, and it was because of this policy decision the project has been dragging on for the past four years, when neither the Congress nor the Janata Dal government took a decision on it. However, the five-month old BJP-led government is being blamed for the delay, he said.

Quoting Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha and Civil Aviation Minister Ananth Kumar, Mahajan said the government is still open to the project on which clarification were sought.

On the controversial transfer of Enforcement Director M K Bezbaruah and his subsequent reinstatement following a Supreme Court directive, Mahajan denied that there was any pre-planned move on the part of the Centre.

The government took the decision to transfer Bezbaruah thinking it fit, but revoked its decision following the court's intervention, thus rectifying its mistake, he said.

He emphatically denied AIADMK chief J Jayalalitha's allegations about his (Mahajan) role in Bezbaruah's transfer.

Mahajan ruled out any threat to the BJP-led coalition government at the Centre, and said the Congress was only making noises so that it could ''keep its flock together''.

The conditions in which the BJP-led government assumed charge at the Centre are such that if Vajpayee cannot lead the government, no one else could carry on, he observed. The Congress does not have the strength to pull down this government, he stated. The two options are for the Vajpayee government to last or an election to the 13th Lok Sabha.

Mahajan also clarified that the creation of a separate state of Vidarbha was not on the Vajpayee government's national agenda .

UNI

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