Ajit got letter of support by 'fooling' Sharad's trusted aide Shivajirao Garje

There is a lot of suspense over the letter of support handed over to Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari by NCP rebel leader Ajit Pawar, which led to the immediate revocation of the President's Rule in Maharashtra with a wee-hour swearing-in of Devendra Fadnavis as chief minister.

The BJP has claimed Ajit Pawar was elected leader of the NCP legislature party on October 30 and the letter of support was sent in the same capacity.

However, the contents of the letter delivered by Ajit Pawar and how it was obtained continues to be shrouded in mystery.

A section in the NCP believes that the letter electing Ajit Pawar as the leader of the legislature party was lying in the party office in Mumbai.

In NCP, all party correspondence of this nature is handled by Sharad Pawar's trusted aide Shivajirao Garje.

Garje is a former civil servant handpicked by Sharad Pawar.

A section of NCP believes Ajit Pawar sought the letter notifying his election as the leader of the legislature party from Garje late Friday night.

With Pawar having announced Uddhav Thackaray as the next chief minister after a joint meeting of Sena-Congress and NCP, Garje apparently though the document was being sought to be delivered to the Governor in support of Sena the next day. He did not cross check with Sharad Pawar and hence complied.

Another story doing the rounds is that Ajit Pawar did not hand over the letter of support to the Governor as the leader of the party.

What was given was a signed copy of the attendance sheet of the MLAs who participated in the legislature party MLAs' meeting which elected Ajit Pawar as the NCP leader in the assembly.

In her latest WhatsApp status, NCP leader Supriya Sule takes a jibe at Devendra Fadnavis. Posts his a video of his old interview at a news channel, where he says, I will remain unmarried but will never never never marry with NCP.

In another show of unity, Sule posted a picture with Shiv Sena leaders Aaditya Thackeray and Sanjay Raut.

It happened in 1989 in UP

What is happening in Maharashtra today happened in Uttar Pradesh in 1989. The sequence of events is strikingly similar and led to a change in the political complexion of the state.

The erstwhile Janata Dal that had been formed with the coming together of the Janata Party, Jan Morcha, Lok Dal (A) and Lok Dal (B), had won the 1989 assembly elections and Chaudhary Ajit Singh had been declared as the party's chief ministerial candidate.

The Janata Dal in 1989 had won 208 seats which were short of six MLAs for a majority. The UP assembly, before the creation of Uttarakhand, had 425 members and 213 was the halfway mark.

The then Prime minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh had declared that Chaudhary Ajit Singh would be the chief minister while Mulayam Singh Yadav would be the deputy chief minister.

Preparations for a grand swearing in of the Janata Dal government were on when Mulayam Singh Yadav threw a spanner by rejecting the post of deputy chief minister.

He staked claim to the chief minister's post and was backed by legislators belong to the Jan Morcha faction.

Then Prime Minister VP Singh decided that the chief minister would be decided through a secret ballot and senior leaders Madhu Dandvate, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Chimmanbhai Patel were sent to Lucknow as observers to convince Mulayam Singh Yadav to accept Chaudhary Ajit Singh as chief minister.

Mulayam Singh remained unrelenting and with the help of erstwhile mafia don D P Yadav, he managed to bring 11 Ajit Singh loyalists to his camp.

Senior leader Beni Prasad Varma also played a key role in this power game. The secret ballot was held in the central hall of the UP Vidhan Sabha and Mulayam won over his rival with five votes to become chief minister.

He was sworn in as chief minister for the first time on December 5, 1989. Thereafter, Mulayam Singh Yadav went on to become a major player in UP politics, while Chaudhary Ajit Singh - son of former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh - could never find a firm foothold in state politics.

In 1992 , Mulayam Singh broke away from the Janata Dal and formed his own Samajwadi Party (SP) while Ajit Singh formed his Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) in 1998.

Though the SP and RLD came together briefly in various elections, the sense of unease between the two leaders never dissolved completely and their relationship could never consolidate.