As was only to be expected, Mr. AR Antulay tried to buy time even after the Bombay High Court had held him guilty of having allotted cement quotas to some favoured builders in Bombay in return for “donations” by them to two of the trusts established and controlled by him. But for peremptory instructions from New Delhi requiring him to send his resignation to the governor and clear instructions to the governor to accept it at once, Mr. Antulay would have rushed delegations of ministers and Congress (I) legislators to Mrs. Gandhi with the request that he be allowed to stay on pending an appeal to the Supreme Court and its disposal. Apparently on his authority, his supporters had been spreading the word that Mr. Justice Lentin would not indict Mr. Antulay, that the strictures, even if passed, would not be severe, that he would appeal, and the legal proceedings could go on for three years by which time fresh elections would be round the corner. The strategy could not have succeeded. Mrs. Gandhi was committed publicly to honouring the court’s verdict. Indeed, if reports emanating from sources close to Mr. Antulay are to be accepted at their face value, he himself told a state cabinet meeting recently that he had proposed to Mrs. Gandhi that he be allowed to ignore the high court’s judgment and thereby to confront the judiciary and that she had turned down his “proposal”. It speaks for Mr. Antulay’s daring that in spite of all this he should have tried to stall his resignation on Tuesday.
We draw attention to this attempt on Mr. Antulay’s part in order to press home the point that he can be depended upon to try and secure the selection of one of his cronies as Maharashtra’s next chief minister. And the sad fact is that he enjoys considerable support among the Congress(I) legislators by virtue of the unprecedented powers of patronage he has conferred on them. This means that the choice of Maharashtra’s next chief minister cannot be left to the state Congress(I) legislature party. Mrs. Gandhi has to provide the lead. Mr. Antulay s influence in the party apart, some other considerations deserve notice in this regard. The state needs a strong chief minister if the mess created by Mr. Antulay is to be cleared up. Only a person who is not beholden to the local legislators for his elevation to the august office can play such a role. Maharashtra is not just another state. It is the industrial-commercial heart of India. As guardian of the larger national interest, Mrs. Gandhi has an obligation to ensure that Maharashtra gets a decisive, honest and efficient chief minister. For the benefit of those who may read into this plea support for Mrs. Gandhi’s alleged authoritarianism, it may be recalled that Mr. Nehru had to remove Mr. Shamsuddin whom Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed had managed to install as his successor as the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir and that Mr. GL Nanda and Mr. Lal Bahadur Shastri prevented Mr. Pratap Singh Kairon from getting one of his henchmen “elected” as his successor as the chief minister of Punjab. Some of Mr. Antulay’s cabinet colleagues enjoy a particularly unsavoury reputation. It will be a tragedy of the first order if one of them succeeds him.