The Hindu : Deshmukh absent at PM's programme

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jan 07, 2003

National

National

Deshmukh absent at PM's programme

By Mahesh Vijapurkar

MUMBAI JAN. 6. Eyebrows were raised when the Maharashtra Chief Minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, today did not participate in two engagements of the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, in Mumbai today amid speculation — perhaps quite unfounded so far — that he was in trouble with the Congress (I) high command on his stewardship here and made himself unavailable. Actually, he was in Pune the whole day.

Asked about it, Mr. Deshmukh said he had taken Mr. Vajpayee's permission before leaving for Pune where he had two major, earlier-arranged programmes he could not avoid as it meant major changes in the organisers' schedule and would have caused them a lot of inconvenience: the all-India Women's Congress and the International Hindi Sahitya Sammelan. ``Take it from me, there is no threat,'' he said. Mr. Deshmukh might have stayed away from the Prime Minister's events for yet another but unarticulated reason: both the events, the one at the Rambhau Mhalgi Institute and the Vivekananda Education Society have a pro-BJP affiliation and he may not have wanted to get into a controversy, though protocol demands that he accompany the Prime Minister on his public engagements.

The Institute at Uttan is a Sangh Parivar-affiliated organisation. The Vivekananda Education Society's underpinning was provided by the late Hashu Advani, a BJP stalwart and his association made it ``quite saffron,'' a source close to Mr. Deshmukh said. ``It was not the Prime Minister's function; it was a Vajpayee function.''

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National