The three constituents of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government — the Shiv Sena, the Congress, and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) — will now be meeting at regular intervals to sort out problems resulting from the lack of coordination.
This decision was taken after NCP chief Sharad Pawar on Monday evening held a meeting with Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and State Home Minister Anil Deshmukh. The meeting came in the backdrop of the sudden cancellation of transfers of 10 Deputy Commissioners of Police from Mumbai.
According to sources, the issue of accessibility of the CM to ministers from other parties, which is leading to miscommunication between the three parties, was discussed. “Meeting of leaders of the three parties at regular intervals will be the solution to it. This will ensure a discussion, and also the decisions taken will be fast-tracked,” a senior leader from the NCP said.
A discussion on streamlining the pending transfers of officials was also held. “We cannot keep on postponing the transfers. It damages the morale of the administration. Police transfers need to be done on a priority basis for which a time frame will be decided,” he said.
The leader said that apart from the Home Department, transfers from other departments are pending, which need to be addressed. “That issue too has been sorted out and a decision will soon be taken on this,” he said.
In an unprecedented move, the 10 transfers, which were announced on July 2, were cancelled by the Chief Minister Office on Sunday. Even though Mr. Deshmukh claimed of no political tussle in the matter, the meeting between Mr. Pawar and Mr. Thackeray hinted that all is not well within the MVA and the communication between the three allies has not been normalised since the last meeting between the two.
Last month, the NCP chief had gone to Mr. Thackeray’s residence Matoshri following complaints by NCP ministers that the bureaucracy was undermining the ministers, and Mr. Thackeray himself was more intent on listening to bureaucrats than political allies.
