June 14, 2002	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 2, 1423

MUMBAI, June 13: Thousands of rival political supporters clashed on Thursday in downtown Mumbai, injuring at least seven people, after the state government won a motion to stay in power.

More than 2,000 people, split between backers of Maharashtra state’s ruling Congress party alliance and right-wing Hindu groups, threw stones and glass bottles at one another outside the state assembly after the vote in the house.

Three policemen, one journalist and several of the demonstrators were injured by the flying debris, said an eyewitness.

Some 500 police baton-charged the crowd, fired tear-gas and set up a cordon to separate the feuding sides. Another 1,000 officers stood guard to block the mob from nearing the assembly.

The street fighting came after Maharashtra’s Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh won a confidence motion in the assembly by 143 to 133.

But the opposition cried foul, noting that the house speaker had disqualified from voting seven rebel members of the ruling coalition. Five other lawmakers abstained.

An alliance of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s BJP party and the far-right Hindu movement Shiv Sena had been hoping to oust Deshmukh, who backs India’s main opposition Congress party.

Maharashtra plunged into political turmoil at the beginning of June when nine lawmakers withdrew their support for Deshmukh, charging he was too conciliatory toward the Hindu right.

The move had reduced the government to a minority in the 288-seat legislature.

The crisis came after the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance roared back into power at February 12 municipal elections in Maharasthra’s capital Mumbai, India’s economic hub.

The two sides sparred on who sparked the post-vote violence. Congress supporters said Shiv Sena and BJP partisans started lobbing stones after ruling party supporters set off firecrackers in celebration.

The opposition, however, contended that Congress backers first hurled rocks at the home of Narayan Rane, Shiv Sena’s shadow chief minister.

The friction is unlikely to end as the police looked set to arrest Rane and state BJP leader Gopinath Munde on Congress allegations that the right-wing parties tried to abduct one of their state legislators, Padmakar Walvi, to make him defect ranks.—AFP