MAHARASHTRA-Change of Tactics

Change of Tactics VASANTRAO PATIL, who has been conducting a running battle to have S B Chavan removed from the chief ministership of Maharashtra, has apparently had a change of heart. He told journalists in Bombay this week that he was "no longer interested in the removal of Chavan". This statement was especially unexpected coming as it did after what was one of the sharpest confrontations between Patil and the chief minister over the former's attempt to convert the public felicitation function in Sangli on his seventieth birthday into a demonstration of the support for him among state Congress (l) MLAs (and, conversely, of the lack of such support for the chief minister). The projected trial of strength had so unnerved the chief minister that he even took the politically naive step of threatening to issue a whip to party MLAs to stop them from attending Paul's birthday festivities in Sangli.