‘Some issues bound to be there among 3 allies’

Maharashtra minister and Congress leader Nitin Raut has said there is a certain level of dissatisfaction among his party colleagues over a lack of consultation within the state cabinet amid reports of a rift within the state’s ShivSena-led ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance. In an interview with Aurangzeb Naqshbandi, Raut spoke about some proposals of Congress ministers that the cabinet did not clear even as he maintained the coalition government is stable and will last its full term. Edited excerpts:

What do you have to say about the reports of the rift?

These are all baseless rumours. The government is stable and will last its full five-year term. There is clearly an attempt by the BJP to destabilise the government but they will miserably fail in their nefarious designs.

But there are differences and privately Congress ministers have been complaining about lack of consultations on important matters...

When three partners are running a government, some issues are bound to be there. We try to resolve them internally. Though the chief minister [Uddhav Thackeray] talks to us on some matters, we are not completely satisfied...the chief minister does consult us but the majority of our proposals are not cleared and not even discussed in the cabinet.

Did you discuss this with the chief minister?

Yes, we have expressed our unhappiness.

Have you conveyed this to your party high command?

Naturally.

Was Rahul Gandhi’s statement that Congress is not the key decision-maker in Maharashtra an expression of that resentment?

What he said is that Congress on its own is in power in Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, and Puducherry and there we will not shy away from implementing any pro-poor or pro-people scheme. But we are a small partner in Maharashtra and we are not going to dictate terms to our other allies . But that does not mean that Rahulji talked about pulling the government down.