Dharam Dev Rai’s brothers mourn his death. (below) People gather outside the Gorakhpur house of the labourer killed in Mumbai. Pictures by Naeem Ansari

New Delhi, Oct. 29: The Congress and the BJP are in a bind over Maharashtra.

The Congress is sandwiched between the demands from Lalu Prasad, Ram Vilas Paswan and Amar Singh to “act decisively” and suggestions from its Maharashtra leaders and ally, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), to not “overreact”. The Congress betrayed its dilemma by treading the safe path of issuing “strong condemnations”.

The BJP, too, is not in an envious position. Pulled by the Shiv Sena to one side and the Janata Dal (United) to the other, the BJP couldn’t make up its mind on which ally to swim with.

“They are two of our oldest and most trusted allies. We did a balancing act between keeping George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar together in the NDA. So we are sure we can pull off a similar feat again,” said Ravi Shankar Prasad, the BJP general secretary and spokesperson.

The Congress’s “Friday club”, which counts Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi, Ahmed Patel, Shivraj Patil, A.K. Antony, Pranab Mukherjee and Arjun Singh as its members, met this evening instead of the designated day of the week to assess the situation in Maharashtra.

Sources said the leaders took “due note” of the “concerns” expressed by Lalu Prasad and Paswan, and Amar’s prod to them to pull out of the UPA.

The sources said the leaders questioned the “wisdom” of chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s alleged strategy of covertly pumping up Raj Thackeray, hoping to split the Sena votes and help the Congress retain its turf. The leadership is already peeved with Deshmukh for dragging his feet on a panel’s proposals recommending action against those behind the 1993 riots.

But beyond despatching “advisories”, the Congress made it clear, Deshmukh won’t be touched. “The chief minister has not gone against any core value upheld by the party,” said party spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan.

If the Congress is recalcitrant, the BJP is afraid to utter a word against the Shiv Sena which has been saying that the “the rights of Maharashtrians should be protected” — an indirect endorsement of the campaign against north Indians.

Deshmukh: Under scanner

Prasad condemned the killing of the north Indian labourer on a Mumbai train but he sought to turn the tables on the Congress. “Given the lack of any effective action against elements like the MNS, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Congress-NCP dispensation is overtly or covertly encouraging such elements for political considerations,” he said.

Privately, sources conceded that like their Congress counterparts, the BJP leaders figured out that caution was the better part of valour on Maharashtra. “Let things calm down, we shouldn’t wring our hands in desperation,” a functionary said.

He pointed out that the Thackerays were forced to compete with Raj to protect their political ground.