Boomerang Invective

Beware of a friend who turns foe, they say. He is more dangerous than most. And both Chhagan Bhujbal and Narayan Rane are proving equal to the task. One, the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra and the other a former chief minister, both grew up together in the Shiv Sena, and are now ranged on opposite sides of the political fence in the state. Since the time he quit the Sena for the Congress and now Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party, Bhujbal has done untold damage to his former boss, Bal Thackeray. Rane thought he might just return the compliment.

Instead, in labelling the deputy chief minister an isi agent, Rane’s discovering that he’s possibly bitten more than he can chew. Even Nitin Gadkari of the bjp (who replaced Bhujbal as leader of the opposition in the state legislative council) found the police knocking at his doors for adding his voice to Rane’s as the tables were neatly turned on the "irresponsible opposition" by the Maharashtra government.

The so-called isi agents who visited Bhujbal at his official residence turned out to be three former tada detenues in the bomb blasts case, led by Abu Hashim Azmi who is currently president of the Mumbai unit of the Samajwadi Party. They had apparently called on Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and information technology minister Pramod Mahajan and had apparently come to seek Bhujbal’s action on the reassurance made to them by Vajpayee and Mahajan.

Rane, therefore, finds himself ending up with a lot of egg on his face and being taught a lesson in how to be a responsible opposition leader. Indeed ‘responsible opposition’ was a terminology that had virtually disappeared from the political lexicon in Maharashtra. Unfounded allegations by non-Congress opposition parties in the years preceding 1995 had successfully ruined several reputations, most notably that of Sharad Pawar, the then chief minister of the state.

But while Pawar suffered in silence both defeat and infamy, the newly metamorphosed Congress and the ncp, in government together, are beginning to show more bite. What’s more, in unsheathing their claws, they have begun to draw blood. Thus while Rane, relying on the innuendo and half-truth formula that had so successfully propelled the Sena-bjp alliance to power in 1995, said, "Bhujbal has been harbouring isi agents at his official residence. Believe me, I know what I am talking about. I am after all a former chief minister", he promptly got it back in the gut. He is also a former gangster, returned Bhujbal, using the same tactic to score points off Rane.

He also did more. And it’s his intelligent use of the official state machinery that is proving so galling to both Rane and Gadkari. A political fight has suddenly become a legal one and a defamation case stares them in the face, alongside various criminal charges. First, it was the additional advocate-general P. Janardhanan who, when his opinion was sought by the government, advised that Rane and Gadkari could be arrested under the criminal procedure code if they indeed knew the identities and whereabouts of isi agents and failed to share these with the government and the police. Catch me if you can, Rane had challenged. And as the two leaders failed to substantiate their allegations, state advocate-general Goolam Vahanvati prepared to do exactly that. He instructed the public prosecutor to file cases against the duo under section 500 of the ipc and section 199 (2) of the CrPC under chapter 121 of the ipc. While the first concerns criminal charges of defamation, the second empowers a sessions court to take cognisance of a written complaint by a public prosecutor against a public servant or minister who might have committed a crime.

As the seriousness of the government’s fightback became apparent, there were plaintive cries from both Rane and Gadkari who were cornered by the media this week. Gadkari said he had lost faith in the state government and its police; hence he would share his information only with Union home minister L.K. Advani; Rane, on the other hand, backtracked ("I never said Bhujbal was harbouring terrorists") and harked back to 1993 and the March 12 serial blasts in Mumbai. "The policemen who investigated that case then know what I am talking about," he said.

Maybe. But does he? For the clash with the Sena’s bete noire has ceased to be a farce and taken on the proportions of a tragedy - of errors. Serious errors of judgement.