Congress rehabilitates the scam-tainted former chief minister by fielding him from his family bastion, Nanded
Sandeep Unnithan Nanded, April 11, 2014 | UPDATED 08:21 IST
Ashok Chavan interacts with voters in his constituency
Can you sense a hawa (wave)?" former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan wipes his brow and looks around as he asks the small public rally in Degloor, Nanded district. "Because we could do with some air. It's getting hot." His reference, in the dry Marathwada heat, is to a 100,000-people-strong rally addressed by BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi on March 30, just five days earlier. Modi taunted Chavan for being an "Adarsh candidate", a reference to the housing society scandal which forced Chavan out of the chief minister's office in November 2010. Chavan, 55, was chargesheeted by CBI in 2012 and, in December last year, the Justice (retd) J.A. Patil inquiry committee squarely indicted him, and two other chief ministers, the late Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sushilkumar Shinde, for the housing scandal. It spoke of a "quid pro quo": Building clearances in return for flats for family members.
This scandal, now being probed by CBI, has strangely not affected Chavan's slow steady climb back to prominence within the Congress after a two-year exile. Even Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi's public censure of the Maharashtra state government's rejection of the Justice Patil report in December hasn't deterred him. CBI, which wants to prosecute Chavan under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, has been held at bay only by Maharashtra Governor K. Sankaranarayanan's refusal on January 15 this year to sanction his prosecution. Despite this, Chavan's candidature was endorsed by party President Sonia Gandhi. "As far as we know, Chavan is not barred from contesting the election by any law," Sonia told the media at the release of the Congress manifesto in Delhi on March 26.
Chavan takes this endorsement to indicate that his rehabilitation within the party is complete. Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, no great fan of his, has been silent on the nomination. Ashok Chavan is unfazed. "When the party president has said something, where is the question of anybody else saying anything?" he says as his Innova rushes him to another election rally.
Chavan's mother in-law Bhagwati Sharma, sister-in-law Seema Sharma and father-in-law's relative Madanlal Sharma were found to own flats in the Adarsh Housing Society in 2010. CBI says this was in exchange for favours Chavan granted to the society while he was revenue minister in 2008. Adarsh, the former chief minister says somewhat incredulously, doesn't matter in these elections. "If Adarsh had been an issue, I would not take the risk of contesting," he says, as he blames a section of the media for keeping it alive. The scandal, involving the 31-storeyed residential building in South Mumbai's upmarket Colaba, has only faint resonance in Marathwada, a region comprising eight south-eastern districts over 500 km away. "Adarsh does not matter to us, we vote for Ashok Chavan," says Bandu Gaekwad, who runs a medical store in Nanded.
Chavan's rehabilitation has everything to do with the There Is No Alternative or TINA factor facing the Congress. The prospect of electoral defeat has forced even stalwarts to renounce home constituencies. In the Nanded Lok Sabha constituency, the Congress has a winner. The seat, which goes to the polls on April 17, is a Chavan family bastion. Nanded was held by Ashok Chavan's father, former Union home minister S.B. Chavan, in 1980 and 1984. Ashok Chavan, then a 27-year-old, held the seat for two years after a by-election in 1987 when his father went back to being Maharashtra chief minister. Since 1998 the seat has been held by Ashok Chavan's brotherin-law Bhaskarrao Patil Khatgaonkar.
Even the BJP candidate Digamber Patil, who won the seat once in 2004, admits he is counting only on the Modi wave to break in. "He (Chavan) has a lot of money," he says, "But there is a wave in favour of Modiji." The Modi wave, clearly, is the one thing Chavan fears. In meeting after meeting, he looks for chinks in Modi's armour. "My whole family is behind me, my wife and daughters are campaigning for me, where is Modi's wife?" he asks. That's Chavan at his nastiest.
Later in the evening, the Congress rolls out its heavy artillery. State Revenue Minister Narayan Rane jointly addresses a rally of nearly 10,000 people with Chavan in Digloor. Rane, who was briefly a Shiv Sena chief minister in 1999, trains his guns at Modi. He tells the crowd, many of whom are Muslims, of Modi's American event managers who advise him what to wear and speak, RSS which runs him by remote control and, of course, the Gujarat riots and the Ishrat Jahan encounter. "He's not a Vikas Purush," Rane thunders. "He's a Vinaash Purush." Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar and Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan are also expected to campaign for him soon. "Had Bhaskarrao Patil contested, we would have surely lost," says a Congress worker.
Caste equations have also been at play in Chavan's resurrection. The Congress, which has held power in the state with NCP for 15 years, faces state polls in October this year. The 2011 death of Vilasrao Deshmukh has left the Congress bereft of a strong grassroots leader from the dominant Maratha community. Rane, a Maratha from Konkan, is yet to earn the Congress's trust for the top job because of his origins in the Shiv Sena and for openly staking claim after Chavan's 2010 exit.
"The death of Desmukh literally orphaned the people of Marathwada," says journalist and political commentator Kumar Ketkar. "The Congress is looking at Chavan and his family's halfcentury legacy to retain their vote bank here." Ketkar, however, doesn't foresee a major role for Chavan either in the state or at the Centre because of Adarsh, especially with Modi promising to pursue the case in his Nanded speech. In candid conversation, Ashok Chavan says he belongs to Mumbai rather than to Marathwada. The ghost of Adarsh will ensure it stays that way.
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