Sharad Pawar busy in defending his party colleagues

MUMBAI: Lately, India's agriculture minister and NCP chief Sharad Pawar has been liberally giving out "clean chits" to his acolytes as soon as serious charges are levelled against them. The embattled Maratha strongman is busy defending his party colleagues involved in alleged graft. First it was Sunil Tatkare, the state water resources minister, whose family's unusually large land holdings and dubious companies were exposed by this newspaper a few months ago. Pawar immediately rushed to his party colleague's defence and said these were "baseless and malicious allegations."

Soon after, it was the turn of state PWD minister Chhagan Bhujbal, who faced allegations of corruption and nepotism in the construction of Maharashtra Sadan, the state guest house in Delhi. Yet again, the NCP leadership brushed off the charges.

The senior Pawar was at it again, this time to protect his nephew Ajit Pawar, who resigned as deputy chief minister following the mega irrigation scam. On Saturday, the NCP chief said the minister could not be blamed for the quality of works. Last week, Pawar also refuted allegations of violations in the construction of hill township Lavasa near Pune.

The Mr Teflon of Indian politics has had a long and often controversial association with matters pertaining to real estate. If Pawar's current tenure as Union agriculture minister has left the Congress squirming (the alleged wheat scam that took place under his tutelage and rising foodgrain prices), his earlier avatar as Maharashtra's chief minister in the late 1980s witnessed a humungous 'land dereservation scam' in Mumbai. As many as 285 plots earmarked for various public amenities like parks, gardens, schools, hospitals and markets were dereserved by the Pawar government, leading to a major public uproar and charges of nepotism against the chief minister. The plots were to be parcelled off to builders for commercial exploitation. This was perhaps Pawar's first major brush with Mumbai's lucrative real estate and land deals. But more were to follow. When he was defence minister in the Narasihma Rao government, there was an audacious move to exploit the sprawling cantonment land in Pune for commercial purposes. Fortunately, it was nixed after the Army strongly opposed it.

Last year, it was revealed that Pawar had direct links with the Pune-based City Corporation -- his family holds a 16% stake in the construction company controlled by his close aide Aniruddha Deshpande. Not surprisingly, the first project to be approved by the government was the 400-acre Amanora Park township in Pune, which is promoted by none other than City Corporation.

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