Thursday, December 22 2005 11:30 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The upheaval in Shiv Sena, rain fury in Mumbai, fresh border row with Karnataka and two state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MPs figuring in the 'money for questions' expose when the party is celebrating its silver jubilee national convention here this month-end were some of the highlights of the year gone by in Maharashtra.

Raj Thackarey and Narayan Rane synonymous with the Sena, went their own ways in 2005, leaving the 39-year-old party grappling with the biggest crisis.

Rane, a former chief minister who had served Sena for over three decades was expelled after his frontal attacks on the party leadership.

After being expelled by Sena supremo Bal Thackeray on July three, Rane initially declared that his fight was against the Sena chief's son Uddhav and his coterie but at the height of campaign for the November 19 Malwan Assembly by-poll, launched a personal attack on Bal Thackeray.

Rane won the poll by over 63,000 votes while his Sena rival had to forfeit his deposit. This despite the fact that Uddhav had deployed the entire Sena machinery in Malwan to trounce Rane. The 79-year-old Sena chief had also addressed a campaign meeting at Malwan but failed to impress voters.

The Sena, recovering from its humiliation at the hustings by Rane, received another jolt in the last week of November when the Sena chief's nephew Raj Thackeray, upset at his continued marginalization in the party affairs, announced that he was quitting all party posts.

Indications from his supporters suggest that Raj is all set to launch his own outfit, mainly comprising members of Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena he headed since its inception.

The unprecedented rainfall of July 26 killed 1,083 people and caused large-scale loss of property in Mumbai and other, parts of the state.

The state sought an assistance of Rs 8,740 crore from the Center for the rest of Maharashtra and Rs 3,900 crore for Mumbai for relief and rehabilitation work.

While the Center had so far given Rs 1,000 crore and also food grains, the State Government had so far spent Rs 1,250 crore on the relief work, according to official sources.

The opposition Sena-BJP charged the State Government with adopting partisan attitude in disbursement of cash and relief material among the flood-affected.

Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil blamed neighboring Karnataka for the floods, saying "Excess water storage in the Almatty dam was responsible for flooding in Kolhapur and Sangli districts" of Maharashtra.

Karnataka refuted the charge. The State Government then approached the Central Water Tribunal to seek justice.

Towards the year-end, the State Government was once again involved in a bitter confrontation with Karnataka. The issue this time was the vexed border dispute with Karnataka which resurfaced with the assault in Bangalore of the Marathi-speaking mayor of Belgaum Municipal Corporation Vijay More.

He was assaulted by members of a Kannadiga organization who were furious over the Belgaum civic body passing a unanimous resolution seeking merger of Belgaum and other Marathi-speaking border areas of Karnataka with Maharashtra.

With the Belgaum mayor's assault provoking a strong reaction from the public and the media, Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh shot off letters to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Karnataka Chief Minister Dharam Singh, condemning the incident.

Deshmukh said Karnataka Government's decision to dissolve the Belgaum corporation because it had passed the resolution 'was against democratic norms'.

It that in the 856 villages in the boundary area and also Belgaum, the majority of the population was Marathi-speaking and should be merged with Maharashtra.