Mumbai: In January this year, during one of his conversations with party workers, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar warned his colleagues and cadre to refrain from creating controversies. Speaking in his characteristic, blunt manner, Pawar said, “Tumcha chukanvar pangharun ghalun majha padar ata faatun gelay (I have to cover up your mistakes so many times that there’s now a big hole in the cloth).”
That hole perhaps widened several inches on Thursday when Pawar had to respond to a controversy involving his own son, Parth Pawar, facing allegations of graft in the purchase of a 16.19 hectare plot of land in Mundhwa, Pune, through his company, Amadea Enterprises LLP, at Rs 300 crore, when the plot is said to have a market value of Rs 1,804 crore. The sale registration of this land has now been cancelled.
The parcel was alleged to be a ‘Mahar vatan’ land, denoting hereditary landholding of the Scheduled Caste Mahar community. The allegations were first reported by Marathi news channel Zee24 Taas.
Speaking to reporters Friday, Pawar said the CM had spoken to him regarding the allegations against Parth Thursday morning and he had given his consent to order an inquiry.
“It is easy to make allegations, but it is equally important that people know the reality behind these allegations,” Pawar said, adding that he has also faced graft charges, and the probe had shown he had nothing to do with them.
“I knew nothing about this transaction. I always say, do what fits in the rules. I asked everyone in my office today if anybody put any pressure on anyone to act in a certain manner. There was no pressure from my office on anyone,” he said.
Even immediately after the allegations against Parth were made, Pawar had distanced himself from his son, even as his cousin, Supriya Sule, from the rival Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP-SP) seemed willing to give Parth the benefit of doubt.
Pawar, speaking to reporters Thursday, not just welcomed the probe into the matter and emphasised that no wrongdoing by anyone will be tolerated, he also said, “As our children grow up, they have their own businesses. I have nothing to do with them.”
Pawar’s staunch response distancing himself from the allegations against his son stems from the strong possibility that the entire controversy is likely to have major political repercussions for the leader.
Moreover, this is hardly the first time Pawar’s son Parth has proved to be more of a liability to his father’s politics than an asset.
Political analyst Pratap Asbe, who has closely tracked the Pawar family’s politics and the NCP for over three decades, told ThePrint, “Ajit Pawar distanced himself quickly from the controversy because the political repercussions of this will be dire so close to the local body polls. There is anyway an internal tug of war going on between the three Mahayuti parties.”
The Mahayuti comprises the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
Forty-two nagar panchayats and 246 nagar parishads across Maharashtra are scheduled to go to polls on 2 December. This will eventually be followed by polls to 29 municipal corporations, some of which have been pending for five years.
“Direct allegations against Ajit Pawar’s son hurt his party’s standing in the alliance, and perception wise, it will have an impact on how people see Ajit Pawar,” Asbe said.
This is the first major corruption allegation linked to Ajit Pawar since the 2012 irrigation scam for which he had had to resign as Deputy CM in the then Congress-NCP government. In December 2019, the Maharashtra Anti-Corruption Bureau gave a clean chit to Pawar in the case.
Advantage BJP
The Pune district, especially the city of Pune, Pimpri Chinchwad and Baramati, have traditionally been a stronghold of the undivided NCP while a rising BJP in the region has been the party’s main rival there.
In the 2017 civic polls, the BJP unseated the undivided NCP from the civic bodies of Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad, ending the NCP’s ten-year reign in the municipal corporations.
Political commentators as well as leaders from the Ajit Pawar-led NCP say the direct allegation against Pawar’s son will give a clear advantage to the BJP in the Pune-Pimpri Chinchwad region.
Some NCP leaders also question the politics behind CM Devendra Fadnavis immediately ordering an inquiry into the allegations against Parth and setting up a committee for the same.
“I don’t want to comment on the allegations, but the government’s actions immediately after the controversy surfaced seem highly politically motivated. When a similar land-related controversy had erupted involving Union Minister of State Murlidhar Mohol, there was no inquiry or immediate statement from the CM of any kind. That matter was grave too,” a senior Pune-based party functionary close to Ajit Pawar told ThePrint.
Mohol, who has grown from being the BJP’s mayor in the Pune civic body to a Union minister of state, was last month battling allegations of using his influence to sell a Jain community boarding house in Pune’s model colony to a private builder at a throwaway price. Mohol had termed the allegations as baseless, while the Jain community, which has been a strong BJP vote bank, erupted in protests. The developer eventually pulled out of the agreement citing ethical and moral concerns.
The BJP had neither defended Mohol nor supported him during the controversy. There were no inquiries set up to probe the matter. However, Union Minister Amit Shah is said to have had a word with Mohol during the former’s Maharashtra visit last month, after which the private developer pulled out of the deal.
The above-mentioned leader, however, said, public memory is short, and people can see through the politics at play within the Mahayuti.
In the case of the allegations against Parth, CM Fadnavis briefed reporters on Thursday morning calling the allegations “prima facie grave” and said he has sought information from all concerned authorities in the matter. Later, he set up an inquiry under Additional Chief Secretary Vikas Kharge. So far, the government has suspended a tehsildar in the matter and the Pune Police has registered two FIRs—one in the case of the Mundhwa land parcel and another in the case of another land parcel at Bopodi in Pune. Both FIRs do not name Parth Pawar as an accused, but name the second director of the firm—Digvijay Amarsinh Patil—as an accused. While Parth was accused by the Opposition in the first land deal, he was not accused of any wrong doing in the second deal.
Meanwhile, speaking to reporters Friday, Sunil Tatkare, the Ajit Pawar-led NCP’s Maharashtra president, said, “Pune-Baramati was our bastion, and still is. Some issues have come up, and we will give clarifications. People of Pune, Baramati, Pimpri Chinchwad know us.”
Possible friction within party
After Mahayuti 2.0 came to power in December last year, the first major controversy to haunt the government involved an NCP minister, Dhananjay Munde. His close aide, Walmik Karad was said to have been involved in the alleged murder of a BJP sarpanch in the Beed district and was eventually arrested in the case.
In March, Munde had to step down as minister accepting moral responsibility for the alleged involvement of his right-hand man in the case amid Opposition uproar.
In July, CM Fadnavis took away the agriculture portfolio from NCP Minister Manikrao Kokate on Pawar’s advice, following a string of controversial comments by Kokate.
Political commentator Hemant Desai said, “There will be pressures within the party. Dhananjay Munde had to resign because someone linked to him was arrested, his name was not directly involved in the case. Kokate had to give up his portfolio after controversial statements. So people within the party will wonder why a different rule applies to Ajit Pawar.”
There have been instances of ministers having had to resign in similar cases earlier. For instance, in 2016, Eknath Khadse, who was then with the BJP, had to step down following allegations of conflict of interest in the purchase of a land in the Bhosari taluka of Pune district by his wife and son. The Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) had acquired the land but had not completed the process of compensating the original owner for years.
Khadse’s kin bought the three-acre plot for Rs 3.75 crore despite MIDC officials having informed the former minister about the plot’s acquisition for industrial purposes. According to ready reckoner rates, the market price of the plot was at least Rs 23 crore. A judicial committee probing the case later gave Khadse, who is now with the Sharad Pawar-led NCP, a clean chit.
Speaking to reporters Thursday, Khadse said, “There should be a probe, but since the case involves his son, Ajit Pawar should resign from his post on moral grounds.”
Parth Pawar no stranger to controversies
Parth Pawar has stirred controversies ever since he entered public life. In 2019, he contested the Lok Sabha election from the Maval constituency as part of the undivided NCP and became the first Pawar to ever lose an election.
His candidature had sparked friction between uncle Sharad Pawar and nephew Ajit as the former was said to be against Parth contesting, and even decided to withdraw from the electoral race to avoid having too many members of the same family contesting the poll. His daughter, Baramati MP Supriya Sule, was also contesting from her constituency.
After the MVA government came to power, Parth had once again courted controversy when he hailed the Supreme Court’s decision to hand over the probe into the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput to the Central Bureau of Investigation. Sharad Pawar had then called him “immature”.
Parth then went into political hibernation, only to resurface once again after the NCP split and the Ajit Pawar-led party joined the Mahayuti government.
Along with his brother Jay Pawar, Parth gradually became more involved in the backroom management of Ajit Pawar’s politics and campaigns, especially in the Pune district.
Last year, his meeting with a Pune-based gangster Gajanan Marne had once again drawn flak from all quarters of Maharashtra politics, prompting even Ajit Pawar to term it “wrong”.
In 2019, when Parth had lost the election, he told reporters that he was there to stay in politics, while Ajit Pawar had accepted responsibility for his son’s performance.
Six years on, the story has changed.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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