[Reader-list] Maharashtra Politics

Rakesh Iyer rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com
Wed Aug 12 20:52:11 IST 2009 

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      *From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 32, Dated August 15, 2009*
 *CURRENT
AFFAIRS*   *maharashtra*

*Cooperate Or Else*

*With elections looming, the Congress shows little signs of confronting the
NCP over the arrest of a Pawar confidante for murder, reports **RANA AYYUB*
 [image: image]  *Sugar rush* The Manjra Cooperative plant in Latur,
Marathwada

AFTER THE CBI arrested Lok Sabha MP Padamsinh Patil in Maharashtra last June
for allegedly plotting a high-profile murder three years ago, Congress
leader Vilasrao Deshmukh was asked by newsmen of his views on the arrest. “I
won’t comment on the internal matters of [Sharad] Pawar’s party,” Deshmukh
said curtly before hurrying away. On the face of it, this should be
surprising. For a year, Deshmukh has made noises that his party should break
its nearly tenyear- old alliance with Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party
(NCP) and go it alone in October’s assembly elections. The arrest of Patil —
a Pawar confidante — should have been a golden opportunity to ditch the NCP.
Yet, despite the heat generated by Patil’s arrest, Pawar told TEHELKA: “We
have not got any indication from the Congress high command that it is not
interested in our alliance.”

Such is politics. Formed in May 1999 after splitting from the Congress on
the issue of the foreign origin of Italy-born Congress president Sonia
Gandhi, the NCP was forced to tie up with the Congress barely six months
later, when the state elections threw up a hung assembly. Having thus met
and run the government for five years, the coalition fought and won the 2004
assembly elections together, heading off a challenge from the opposition
BJP-Shiv Sena alliance which it had routed from power in 1999.
 [image: image]  [image: image]  [image: image]  *Face-off *NCP Chief Sharad
Pawar (top), Maharashtra CM Vilasrao Deshmukh (centre) and Lok Sabha MP
Padamsinh Patel (below)

Fearing the natural disadvantage of the two-term incumbent, the Congress-
NCP ruling coalition is wary of parting ways with each other. One of the key
reasons why the Congress-NCP coalition has endured a decade in Maharashtra
despite never being the best of friends is also the reason why Deshmukh is
loath to make an issue out of Patil’s arrest. This reason is to be found in
the array of sugar cooperatives in Maharashtra that do an annual business
upward of a whopping Rs 15,000 crore. These cooperatives are almost
overwhelmingly controlled by the NCP.

Patil’s arrest grabbed headlines not only because he is high profile but
also because the man who was murdered, a cousin of his, had no less of a
high profile, having been a key player in the cooperative sector. After the
CBI, which reports directly to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, arrested him
on June 7 this year, millions were stunned when they saw newspaper
photographs of Patil the murder accused in a tracksuit, jogging blithely
while listening to his iPod, police escort in tow. However, the complicity
of the Congress party in protecting Patil has precedent: two years ago,
Deshmukh, who was then chief minister as head of the alliance in the state,
had given Patil a clean chit in the murder case and had ensured he was not
arrested as a suspect.

To be sure, both men are political neighbours: Patil hails from Osmanabad
and Deshmukh from Latur next door, both in Maharashtra’s Marathwada region,
known for its high number of cooperatives. In Latur, Deshmukh’s son, Amit,
is the chairman of two large sugar cooperatives, Manjra and Vikas. Of
necessity, Deshmukh practices a handsoff approach in the work of the
Osmanabad cooperatives, restricting himself to ensuring that his party works
in tandem with the NCP. Last month, the NCPCongress alliance won the
elections to Osmanabad’s District Cooperative Bank, which provides loans to
farmers and the sugar cooperatives. The NCP won the largest number of seats.
 The NCP controls 70 percent of the state’s sugar co-ops and lakhs of votes
linked to them

Yet, the NCP is worried that Patil’s arrest might bring unwanted
electiontime attention to the cooperatives, where massive corruption has
long been alleged. The NCP controls some 70 percent of Maharashtra’s sugar
cooperatives and thus has traditionally held sway among millions of
sugarcane farmers across a wide swathe of the state. But the party fared
poorly in this year’s Lok Sabha elections in Marathwada, winning only one of
the eight seats. Ironically, this seat — Osmanabad — was won by Patil. The
NCP was especially shaken by the Lok Sabha win of a rebel NCP leader,
Sadashiv Mandlik, in Kolhapur, south of Marathwada. Mandlik is a key player
in the cooperative business in Kolhapur.

Concluding a three-day party meet on July 19, Pawar warned NCP leaders who
control the cooperatives to get their houses in order. These cooperatives
are known to give crores to candidates during state and national elections.
In 2007, a private institute, of which Pawar is president-for-life,
published a report which said it had audited the accounts of the state’s
sugar cooperatives and claimed that 70 percent of them were sick. As Union
Agriculture Minister, Pawar then rushed to announce a financial package
worth Rs 400 crore for these “sick” cooperatives. No independent
verification by any state agency was conducted. Later that year, a report by
the Comptroller & Auditor General of India (CAG) slammed the cooperatives
for widespread financial malpractice, saying that an equal sum of Rs 400
crores was siphoned off from them.
 Pawar got a Rs 400 crore relief package for co-ops deemed ‘sick’ by a
private institute

WITH ASSEMBLY elections around the corner, sugar cooperatives in Osmanabad
and Latur are buying sugarcane from farmers at an all-time high price of Rs
1,800 per quintal. Maruti Rao Patil, a farmer in Dhoka village in Osmanabad
who sells cane to a cooperative run by Padamsinh Patil, is ecstatic. “My
family was in bad shape three months ago. Now, these cooperatives are giving
us good rates.” Predictably, the farmer isn’t swayed by the CBI charges
against the arrested NCP leader – just what the party wants.

Last month, Pawar’s nephew, Ajit Pawar, a key NCP leader, began to
extensively tour the state and meet sugarcane farmers. Ajit’s wife is
Padamsinh Patil’s sister. Ajit also has great leverage in managing the
affairs of the state’s cooperative banks. He has been the president of the
Pune District Cooperative Bank since 1990. Clearly, the NCP is pulling out
all the stops to ensure that the Congress doesn’t desert it at this crucial
juncture. For now, it appears to be succeeding. During the Lok Sabha
elections three months ago, rebel NCP leader Mandlik, approached Rahul
Gandhi, offering to switch to the Congress. Gandhi refused. So as long as
the cooperative sector works well, the Congress-NCP alliance is here to
stay.

*WRITER’S EMAIL*
rana.ayyub at gmail.com

 *From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 32, Dated August 15, 2009*




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