In his many television interviews on the drama behind the formation of the Sena-NCP-Congress government in Maharashtra, Sharad Pawar admitted that there was a sharp altercation between him and Congress leaders which almost led to a breakdown in negotiations. However, he declined to reveal what the heated exchange was about. It seems that the issue which caused sparks to fly at that fateful meeting was the post of the assembly speaker. The Congress was adamant about staking claim to the post.

In a hung assembly such as Maharashtra has, the speaker will play a vital role in all crisis situations. The Congress clearly wanted to have a lever to exercise power over the Pawar-crafted alliance. The Congress was so hell bent on getting the post that the normally affable and unfailingly polite Ahmed Patel lost his cool. The buzz in Maharashtra political circles is that Patel has rarely been as brusque as he was that evening. Pawar saw it as rudeness. After all, he is a far more senior leader than all those present in the meeting.

His nephew Ajit Pawar walked out in protest and went straight into the waiting arms of Devendra Fadnavis. It was Praful Patel who poured oil on troubled waters and persuaded the negotiators to take a break and meet again. But tempers were running high in the Congress. It had been refused the post of deputy chief minister. Its leaders felt that the speaker’s position should be given to the party as compensation.

Congress negotiators were so annoyed that after the three-party meeting, they met on their own and decided to make the issue a breaking point. The unexpected events that night culminating in the early morning swearing in of Fadnavis as chief minister and Ajit Pawar as his deputy had a salutary effect. Tempers cooled on all sides and a compromise was finally reached after Sharad Pawar regrouped his party. The Congress has got the speaker’s post but it may have sacrificed some key portfolios for it.

Meeting Indians abroad

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla has taken a leaf out of Narendra Modi’s book for his foreign tours. When he travels abroad to attend international parliamentary meets, he asks to meet and address the Indian diaspora. Naturally, unlike the grand events planned for the prime minister, Birla’s meets are more modest because they are arranged by the Indian embassies in those countries.

Although the embassies find it difficult since it is beyond their protocol duties, they do try and accommodate the Speaker’s request as far as possible. Birla has managed to address at least two gatherings already in the course of six trips outside. Interestingly, both these gatherings were during transit halts. One was in Dubai where he changed flights on his way back from the general assembly of the 64th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference in Uganda. The other was in Frankfurt as he flew back from Belgrade in Serbia where he had gone for the 141st meet of the Inter Parliamentary Union. His message for NRIs is that they are India’s cultural ambassadors.

A rough time in jail

One of the first telephone calls former finance minister P Chidambaram made on release from prison after he was given bail by the Supreme Court was to his lawyer, Kapil Sibal. A million thanks, he is believed to have told Sibal. His 106 days in Delhi’s Tihar Jail have been rough on the 79-year-old Congress leader. The last couple of weeks were particularly hard because Delhi’s winter has set in. Prison cells in Tihar are not properly insulated and tend to be drafty and chilly.

Although inmates are provided with blankets for warmth, Chidambaram had to get his overcoat to beat the cold. Since inmates don’t get pillows, he used the blankets to prop up his head while sleeping. The overcoat became his blanket. The saving grace for the former finance minister was that the court relented to allow him home-cooked food and wear his own clothes. That’s how he managed to get the overcoat in his cell.

Opposition to CAB

Although 12 opposition parties have adopted a common line to oppose the controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill, there appear to be divisions within, like there were over the withdrawal of Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir. For instance, a section of the Congress feels that while the party should ask tough questions of the government on religious discrimination in granting citizenship, it should not vote against the bill. This section feels that the party cannot be seen as opposing citizenship for persecuted Hindus from neighbouring countries.

However, the decision taken at the meeting of 12 opposition parties in Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad’s room was to not only vote against the bill but to actively campaign against it too. Unless Sonia Gandhi cracks the whip this time, the embarrassment the party faced over Article 370 could be repeated. At that time, several Congress leaders, particularly those regarded as Young Turks, had openly supported the Modi government’s move to remove J&K from the protective umbrella of Article 370.