Mumbai, Aug. 1 :    Mumbai, Aug. 1:  One step forward, two steps backward is an axiom Bal Thackeray appears to live by. But if you take it to mean the Shiv Sena chief is beating a hasty retreat from the political mess his party MP Sanjay Nirupam created in Delhi, you've got another thought coming. Thackeray flips and flops. He takes a U-turn when an about-turn is not possible. He disowned editorials in the party mouthpiece he edits when he came under pressure. He distanced himself from the remarks his MPs made in Parliament when things became too hot for him. It's all part of a well-thought-out Thackeray strategy, sources familiar with his working style said. It was on display when he called up Atal Bihari Vajpayee yesterday to soothe his frayed nerves and pledge continuing support while making sure that Sena MPs stayed away from the NDA meeting today. The last thing Thackeray wants, with his 15 balance-tilting Lok Sabha MPs, is to be taken for granted by Vajpayee, sources said. He wants to be consulted regularly on major national issues. When affronted, Thackeray, who likes to symbolise the snarling tiger on his party flags, growls, sending shivers down the government's spine. Aware of the vulnerability of the Prime Minister, dependent on allies like him for survival, Thackeray keeps his cards close to his chest, playing them right. The Sena shoved Vajpayee to the brink, but Thackeray made sure the Prime Minister did not fall off into the abyss. A fall of government would cost him as dearly. Thackeray enjoys the trappings of power, without holding any official position. Power gives him a sense of immunity from the state government, determined to cage the roaring tiger. The Centre put pressure on chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh when the state government arrested him in connection with the Srikrishna Commission report on the Mumbai riots. He was bailed out within an hour of the arrest. What deputy chief minister Chhagan Bhujbal, a Sena-turned-Nationalist Congress Party leader, can do to rein in the Sena chief, the BJP cannot, party leaders rued. Not just at the Centre, the BJP relies on the Sena in the state too to make a comeback. When former deputy chief minister Gopinath Munde, now a BJP national vice-president, upped the ante in the run-up to the Kalyan-Dombivili municipal elections last year and tried to call Thackeray's bluff, he was silenced by a jittery BJP leadership. Pramod Mahajan, Munde's brother-in-law, was sent to Mumbai immediately to straighten Thackeray's ruffled feathers. As the cold war between the BJP and Sena rages, Thackeray wants Vajpayee to step in and resolve the Enron impasse once and for all, sources said. Thackeray had given the green signal to the US energy giant after ordering the project scrapped. The Prime Minister has so far shown little interest in getting into the controversy. The Sena chief is peeved because Vajpayee paid no heed to the party's demand for another ministerial berth in the place of Ram Jethmalani, the Sena-backed Rajya Sabha MP who was dropped from Vajpayee's Cabinet. Thackeray asked Vajpayee not to see the Sena attack on his office as an assault on him or his integrity, but only after he drove the message home: give in or perish politically. The Sena, clearly, wants to keep Vajpayee on his toes, no matter how weak his operated knees are.