Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has given the go-ahead for conducting a National Population Register (NPR) in the state and this appears to have put the delicate coalition equation between Thackeray’s Shiv Sena and his alliance partners the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Indian National Congress (INC) in a flux.
On Tuesday Thackeray told media persons, that he had no problem with the NPR. “CAA and NRC are different issues. NPR is different. No one has to worry if CAA gets implemented. NRC is not there and will not get implemented in the state. NPR is like a census and I will go through the columns given in the form. I don’t think there should be any problem with it,” said Thackeray who was touring Sindhudurg district in the Konkan region.
Uddhav Thackeray’s flip-flops on the subject are worrisome. Thackeray, who had earlier said that CAA could lead to an ‘invisible partition’ of India, subsequently said in a video interview to Sanjay Raut, executive editor of Shiv Sena’s mouth piece Saamana, “CAA does not take away citizenship, just gives it to affected minorities from neighbouring countries. The law has been misunderstood. But NRC is problematic because it can affect people off all religions including Hindus.” This is classic communal politics… a politics that suggests that something is only a problem if it affects the majority community.
The timing of Thackeray’s NPR backing is also curious given how it comes in wake of NCP Chief Sharad Pawar expressing displeasure at how the Elgaar Parishad case was handed over to the National Investigation Authority (NIA).
After Thackeray said that he had no objections with the NIA taking over the investigations in the Elgar Parishad case, State Home Minister and NCP member Anil Deshmukh said that Thackeray had “overruled” the NCP in doing so. Sharad Pawar, NCP chief too expressed his unhappiness in the matter. He had told mediapersons at a press conference in Kolhapur, “Maintaining law & order is a state subject. It is unfair to encroach upon the rights of the state and Maharashtra’s support to the move is more unfair.”
This is the first decision of the chief minister that has Pawar has criticized since formation of the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government. When the MVA was formed Pawar had written a letter to the CM demanding a probe in the matter by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by an IPS officer. But before the state home department could do so, the Centre transferred the case to the NIA which then asked the Pune sessions court to transfer evidence and records to the special NIA court in Mumbai.
All this could be political posturing by Thackeray to keep alliance partners in check, by appearing to side with the BJP’s stand given how they control the government at the center.
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