‘The Whole Genesis Of The NCP Was For Public Office’

A trusted lieutenant of the Gandhis, Prithviraj Chavan had been sent to Maharashtra as chief minister to set its house in order. Instead, there were constant reports of scams, differences bet­ween the Congress and ally NCP, leading finally to a break-up. Chavan speaks to Prarthna Gahilote on state politics:

Prarthna Gahilote: Increasingly, your critics are saying that the alliance with the NCP essentially broke up because the NCP was anyways looking for a way out, but the bitterness between you and Mr Pawar was the last straw. Would you agree with that?

Prithviraj Chavan: I am not sure. If it was bitterness then it could have happened earlier. Why did it have to wait for the very last minute and the last day? Was somebody waiting for the outcome of the Shiv Sena-BJP talks...?

It would appear so, because within minutes of the break up between the BJP and the Shiv Sena, the NCP also unilaterally decided to break up [with Congress]. Now we got a feeling that this time, Ajit Pawar, who is a senior leader of NCP, and was the deputy CM, had of course, a strong, very strong desire to become the Chief Minister. On earlier occasions, it was some other leader, but not connected to the family or the president of the party. So he was more equal than the others kind of thing  The whole genesis of the NCP was for public office. Mr Sharad Pawar broke from Congress in his aspirations to become Prime Minister and Mr Ajit Pawar broke the alliance in his aspiration to become the CM of Maharashtra.

Now nothing wrong with having aspiration but the conditions had to be right. The way the alliance talks began this time, there was a pre-condition. The NCP, Mr Ajit Pawar particularly, began the meeting by saying, they wanted 144 seats, take it or leave it. Now negotiations, never begin on such pre-conditions. He kept on saying that they wanted 30 more seats. Last time also we went into an alliance. This would have been the sixth time we were entering into an alliance. We had already done three Lok Sabha elections and two Vidhan Sabha elections. This would have been sixth election, third Vidhan Sabha election. Never before had such pre-conditions been put.

Here, Mr Ajit Pawar very specifically said, "Either you say yes to 144 or there’s no further point of talking." It was a 'take it or leave it,' kind of ultimatum. We couldn’t do anything after that. We shifted the talks to Delhi and then in Delhi something happened. A little bridging of the gap happened. My logic was simple. In 2009, Congress party got twice the number of LS seats than NCP and as a result, in the assembly elections that ensued three months later, the NCP gave up 10 seats, the NCP conceded 10 seats to us.

Now come to 2014, the NCP got twice the number of LS seats as Congress. So the same logic should work which worked in 2009 and, therefore, going by that logic we were ready to cede 10 seats back to the NCP, back to 124. But NCP wanted 30 more seats. That was clearly out of line and we got stuck there. But then we tried to sort of come together. Tried to bridge the gap. But because no firm offer of reducing from 144 was forthcoming, we assumed that we could meet some mid-point somewhere. I convinced my party leadership to relax a little. But a day before the talks broke, a fresh new condition was put in, that two and half years of chief ministership is to be shared.

Now, the time honoured formula was that any party that gets more number of seats gets the chief ministership. But then suddenly to change that formula, minutes virtually before the end of filing the nominations, to bring in a new condition, clearly indicated that everything was not right. We were sort of prepared that NCP was going the other way. And whether they had any understanding with BJP, time alone will only tell.

But the timing is very interesting. Within minutes of BJP’s termination of alliance with Shiv Sena, NCP terminates alliance with us. Now to say—as they have been— that because Chief Minister was not available, the CM went to Karad is quite silly because it’s not necessary that always we must have a face to face discussion.

Out of the 29 seats that we could cede, we offered them to choose, the list was shared with them. I sent a note to them. Now of course they are trying to find some excuse. But I think there was some pre-determined plan.

You emphasise that the NCP-Congress alliance broke soon after the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance, would you then say that this was a tactical move?

I don’t know what was at the back of their mind—whatever they are saying is not right. But the fact is: you don’t start negotiations with such hard pre-conditions. "You must cede 30 seats, you must share the chief ministership, two and half years, and two and half years." That was not really acceptable to us. Anyway, at my level, I couldn’t have agreed to any of these conditions. So I went back to Delhi and consulted my leadership to see if the leadership was prepared to accept such conditions.

Would your political sense then say that the NCP could back up the BJP post polls?

I will not allege any such understanding, but it’s for the whole state to see and they are looking at the scenario that is emerging and I think generally it is a characteristic of small parties. Post-poll parties do try and align with the central party in power at the centre. Even f you remember, Omar Abdullah’s party, Farooque Abdullah’s party, aligned with the BJP, with Vajpayeeji, for a simple reason—and they said it very clearly—that the state's interest had to be looked after so they had to back the Prime Minister. So I won’t be surprised if the NCP wants to get a part of the pie and share in the ruling dispensation in Delhi.

Did breaking off with an old ally hurt?

Of course it did. It is not a very happy [situation]. But of course the alliance did not work very smoothly at the ground level. There were rumours that people were asked to file nominations as independents. Our people had apprehensions that even if you go into an alliance, would it really work at the ground level? But we did try to work it in Lok Sabha. And it did work in Lok Sabha much better than before. And it could have worked now also, but apparently there was some other agenda.

What would that agenda be?

Agenda was to somehow get to power. Somehow to beat Congress party and to try and get more numbers than the Congress party. In any emerging scenario, become a major player in Maharashtra politics. As it is with all small parties. As it is, this is what happened between Shiv Sena and BJP.

Given that it wasn’t a smooth alliance, what do you think was the weakest link between the NCP and the Congress?

I wouldn’t say the weakest link... They had a different political ideology. I came from a different background. I came in the context of Adarsh scam. And there was a specific mandate laid down by my party, particularly as articulated in the Burari session of the Congress, where the Mrs Gandhi articulated her vision of fighting corruption. Her initiative of the RTI law, and she said all chief ministers should cede discretionary powers and all these discretionary allotments should stop. So if you remember, in the aftermath of Adarsh was the Burari resolution of the Congress party where a lot of these ideas were articulated. So I think the Congress party did want to get away from—the Congress was trying to frontally attack corruption. That is why the Congress party brought in an RTI kind of law, which alone unearthed a lot of these wrong doings, so to say. So it was a commitment of the Congress party to clean up the administration. And one of the things that we did was to bring in the RTI law nationally. But for the RTI law none of these scams would have come to light. So it is our contribution to cleaning up politics. It has slowed down decision making whether in Delhi or here. Now officials are very very careful, nobody takes drastic decisions at the spur of the moment, no one does that, verbal orders are not accepted. So there is a qualitative change in governance because of RTI.

You know, but that again will go against you in the polls. People believe that while the CM himself maybe spotless, but a large number of ministers in his cabinet had corruption charges against them.

But that’s true. The point is, that is unfortunately the truth of the coalition. This is exactly what happened in Delhi. Dr Manmohan Singh [had the] same clean reputation but then things happened. Here, many other things predate my coming to Mumbai. There were old issues. There were some cases, we had to adjudicate on those, whether to allow criminal prosecutions of certain persons or not, those kind of issues came up. But in the larger interest what happens is when you are having a coalition and when you are confronted with issues like this then at times you decide whether it is in the larger national interest to plunge a state in another election sooner than it is due or to make sure that things work out, try to correct wrong doings, not sanction wrong decisions, and all that. So this is the dilemma. And nobody has a clear answer to it. That’s what happened in Delhi. It was easy for Dr Manmohan Singh to dump the DMK ministers and risk the government. But whether not risking the government, letting the government continue, is in the larger interest of the people or to say, "No, no, it doesn’t matter if there are frequent elections but we cannot have such an unethical alliance." That’s a dilemma that the country will have to answer. People have answered in a way by voting decisively in Lok Sabha elections and I hope people will vote decisively in the Maharashtra assembly elections also.

So how will you tackle it Maharashtra? Is the Congress going to play victim or will the Congress be aggressively against the NCP?

We’ll be aggressive and our agenda is to fight against corruption. I am not claiming that we’ll finish corruption overnight—nobody can. But we should put systems in place so that files don’t have to come to the chief minister’s level. So that files get decided at the lower level. If somebody misbehaves or somebody does something wrong, there’s an immediate check at the higher level. But if it happens at the chief minister’s level, then where is the appeal?

The way the system is designed now, almost everything travels up to the chief minister. And so there is discretion used. I think what you need is a threepronged attack. One is you need to decentralise. You also need to know that people are punished quickly. Not like wait for 18 yearsNobody can—as in Jayalalitha’s case. It’s not acceptable. We can reduce corruption at least from top down. And at the bottom level, there could be correction by deterrent punishment quickly. All these fronts we’ll have to work with.

Mr Chavan there is criticism against you that you did not do enough to either stop corruption in Maharashtra. Nor did you take strict action against those guilty of corruption charges.

You see, my attempt to tackle corruption or to correct things was to bring in a system change. Why was corruption happening? Because rules were not clear, there was discretion, there was no proper appeal procedure, citizens were running helter-skelter, speed money was being paid, and we didn’t have proper checks and balances. If a file remained at a particular place for a very long time, then someone should be held accountable, and responsible for those kind of things which could have been put in place. And we’re trying to put those in place by using e-governance in a very big way. By giving information to people on where the file was at that time without people having to go from office to office. So e-governance helped to a great extent. But it is a process and everyone has to share the vision that we need to make everything transparent. In order to take the development benefits further. We reintroduced e-tendering—a lot of people opposed it. We introduced e-governance, people could access the progress of a case at home on computer. So a lot of changes were made.

So it’s not true to say that we didn’t work against corruption. One of the things that we could not do was prosecute ministers on any suspicion or any allegations of corruption. But there had to be a proper, due process of law, somebody had to file an FIR, somebody had to press a case, find out the case—some things did indeed go wrong, we didn’t get the permission from the appropriate authority, sometimes even from the cabinet—only then can we really prosecute. It’s a very slow process. People get irritated because of that, that nothing is happening. People want the guilty to be punished quickly. That doesn’t happen in our system. We have the classic Jayalalitha case before us. It took 18 years and that’s why we need to change the perception. I have tried to do my best in the real estate sector, in irrigation sector, in toll sector but I am sure in another five years now, we will be able to clean up a lot of this mess.

Did you not get enough time to be able to do the kind of things you wanted to do?

It took me about two years to understand the complexities of governance in Maharashtra, after that I tried to… that’s why people accuse me of not taking decisions which is not true. After all my file clearing record, that’s on RTI, you can check it. I cleared more files than any other chief minister in the history of Maharashtra. But there were files that were difficult in nature where huge disproportionate favour was given to individuals. I stopped them and changed the policy. The policy change took time. Till the policy changed I invited them back to the new policy. Many of them didn’t accept that. Generally I stepped on many toes and they didn’t accept that.

Besides the time factor, who would you call a bigger hurdle, Mr Sharad Pawar or Mr Ajit Pawar?

No I wouldn’t want to name names. That wouldn’t be correct. But, yes, their way of running things was different. They have to realise that now that there is an RTI law, for example in the irrigation system, lots of things got recorded in the enquiry reports and that document is now there in the RTI for all to see. Enquiries are being further conducted. But once the situation comes transparently on paper and on record, it is there for somebody to go ahead and prosecute just to determine if there was a case for prosecution. I think what we did was—we had to understand the problem first—whether there was a problem that requires prosecution or requires investigation or requires policy changes and so you change that.

Mr Chavan people believed that this election was over for the Congress party even before the first vote was cast given the kind of anti-incumbency that the party was facing both in the state and the UPA. Do you think, after the break up, there is a ray of hope for the Congress and it can now play some kind of a role in government formation in the state at least?

Look I don’t buy this anti-incumbency argument because if you look at it, in the 2004 elections we had five years of anti-incumbency, in 2009 we had 10 years of anti-incumbency. Still we did well. So it’s not that time period has lapsed and however long the government has been in power, people will forget. Ultimately it's how much people are happy. It’s largely a matter of perception. Whether a good governance has been delivered. Whether the person leading the government is sincere enough to solve people’s problems and is trying to fight corruption. By and large, people perceive if it’s a reasonably good government and good governance has been given to the people.

Of course, there are challenges. If members of the team are facing challenges, of course a large part of the responsibility falls on the team leader also. I’ve been trying to convince people that we have tried our best with some of the past legacies. We were trying to clean that up. The only way to fight a situation is to place a policy framework which will be more transparent, when better decisions will be taken, quality decisions will be taken. We will budget the contractors who will come with an accountability situation, make sure we have social decision making, make sure that it doesn’t go against anybody’s interest, that it is just decision making and it doesn’t hurt any sections of the society. These are the perceptions people make about the government, its policies. I think we’ve taken some good policy decisions in the last five years of the government, unprecedented number of decisions which were pending for many many years—just being pushed under the carpet. I took it out and I took those decisions in the interest of the common man of Maharashtra.

Would you then say that the Congress is better off without the NCP than it was before?

I wouldn’t say that. I don’t want to cast aspersions on anybody considering the NCP is what it is and the Congress is what it is. We tried very hard to make sure that the secular vote does not split or get divided but the NCP decided otherwise.

Just like Haryana, even in Maharashtra you have re-nominated most of your MLAs, this when Rahul Gandhi has been trying to introduce new systems in the party, primaries etc, when you re-nominate old MLAs. Does that mean that the Congress party wants to go back to old school politics and the  tried and tested methods of winning elections?

Rahul Gandhi did try to bring in a new kind of governance, something like the Western primary system where the party selects a candidate but that didn’t work effectively because the party’s constitutional system is not fool-proof yet. Particularly, the decision to let panchayat members vote. Panchayat members are not members of the Congress party. They were being given a vote to vote for the primaries. And that obviously didn’t work because people with no allegiance to party organisations decided our candidates, so that did not work. But this is an experiment we tried, and we’ll continue to find new ways to nominate people. So probably you can say that we have gone back to the old strategy of selecting candidates.

So there is a concerted effort to go back to the old model?

Not concerted, because the only new innovation that was tried was the primary system in few constituencies of the Lok sabha, which didn’t clearly show that this is a better system. So it was an experiment that was done but not necessarily to be adopted on a larger scale.

Considering there is so much criticism for Rahul Gandhi’s leadership and the drubbing the Congress party faced, do you think that the central leadership, particularly the Gandhis, should come out and interact with the cadre and the people more?

I think that is being done. I mean we, at our own terms and level at the state, are trying to mobilise the cadre, talk to them, and introspect. I think it was an aberration where there was anger against the UPA II, and with this anger, Mr Modi came out and ran a different type of election, a US presidential type of election where he offered himself for the seat of Prime Minister which was never done before, along with a very massive use of media. All these worked together and I think people voted the way they did. It was also the manifest anger against UPA II, corruption, inflation and all those issues coming together. But, then, nothing: We accept it and try to correct ourselves.

I think the wave or whatever was created by Mr Modi, that has evaporated as the by-election results have shown. This is a different election and I think people have realised their mistake of putting all their eggs in one basket. I think they will not take the risk of going with the BJP again at the state level election.

But that’s the people you are talking about. There is also a huge rebellion against Mr Rahul Gandhi’s ideas…

I don’t think there is rebellion. There are stray voices who are trying to justify why they lost and their near and dear ones lost, and trying to shift the blame somewhere else. Rahul Gandhi didn’t have anything to do with it. Rahul Gandhi has been successful to articulate the aspirations of the young in the Congress party. And whenever you try to shake up things, try to bring in a new order, there is resentment from the old school and that’s what happened.

So in the Congress, among the Gandhis, the leadership would remain with Mr Rahul Gandhi…

Well of course he is the leader. The Congress party has nominated him to be Number 2 in the party. He is number 2 in the party.

Here, there was an announcement of an alliance with the SP and then it was called off. Many see it as the central leadership’s loss of trust in you.

I don’t think so. That’s not true. I mean it was—very clearly, we were negotiating wit h many parties including some Dalit parties and the talks with the Samajwadi party could not be concluded because we were still concluding our talks with the NCP. Now the seats that we were offering to the NCP could not be offered to the SP. So when the NCP alliance finally broke, we went back to the table again and agreed to hold hands with the Samajwadi Party. We gave them some seats, they wanted more and we could not come to an agreement on how many seats should be ceded. It was as simple as that. It’s like, we had a long discussion with NCP and then ultimately we couldn’t agree on the number of seats and we broke off. But there is no lack of trust and nothing to do with the central leadership. We could not reach an agreement here. What has the central leadership got to do with this?

But there was a glitch. An alliance was declared and then called off…

No, no alliance was declared. What I said was that we were confident that we were going into an alliance and were very confident that the gap would be bridged. But it wasn’t. That’s all. It was an ongoing situation.

It’s not a loss of face for you?

In what way?

In the sense that you announced an alliance and then Delhi called it off, Mrs Gandhi put her foot down.

No. No. Delhi didn’t issue a statement. No. No. I don’t think Delhi issued a statement. We couldn’t reach a number. I would have gone to the central leadership with the proposal for an alliance had we reached one. So there was no reason for any finality to the alliance.

Your critics in Delhi say that leaders like Digvijay Singh and Prithviraj Chavan are working against the interest of the Congress party…

How? In what way? These are canards being spread by someone. If that was so, how and why would I be asked to lead the Congress party in the election campaign in Maharashtra?

What would you say to people like Beni Prasad Verma who have been at the forefront of such criticism…

He didn’t understand. Normally he doesn’t have a problem in understanding my statements. All I said was I thought that Mr Gandhi should have been part of the government, in my sincerity… Does it amount to criticism? Does it amount to working against the interest of the party? It’s quite silly to say that. I don’t know what Mr Digvijay Singh said but I sincerely felt that his taking a ministerial responsibility would have articulated the aspirations of the young. I said that while we were in Delhi, while the government was still on, but he [Rahul Gandhi] very categorically said that, 'No, I am going to concentrate on party.' So how was it being seen as anti-party? Mr Beni Prasad of course issued a statement without understanding what I was saying. He just wanted to be different or say something different or earn some brownie points—it’s quite silly. All I said was Mr Gandhi should have taken a ministerial responsibility, and that’s my personal view. There’s nothing anti-party about it. There’s no criticism and all. It’s just a perception that he would have better articulated the aspirations of the youth having worked almost 10 years with the youth in a very big way. And people, at least the young in the Congress party, wanted him to articulate the aspirations of the youth in the cabinet. So it is my personal opinion.

When criticism like this from Beni Prasad Verma comes your way, what’s your reaction to it?

It’s Mr Beni Prasad Verma’s statements. How seriously Mr Beni Prasad Verma is taken in the party or the country? I don’t want to comment on it but I think how can anybody label that as an anti-party statement. It’s my sincere aspiration that he should have articulated, as a leader of the youth of the Congress party— if he had joined the government, he would have better articulated the aspirations of the youth in the government. But he categorically said, I don’t want to do it. So that’s the end of the matter. But to now turn it and twist it to say that it is anti-party, it’s very strange. Nothing like that at all. If that was the case, in wouldn’t have been asked to lead the Maharashtra campaign.

Do you think the time has actually come for the Congress party to once again start training, evolving leadership at the state level, have regional satraps. We’ve seen in the Lok Sabha polls, it helped the BJP. At some point, the Congress stopped doing it...

I don’t think so. Of course, there’s nothing wrong in creating new leadership anytime, any place. It should be done. To say that Congress has stopped doing it is not correct. Congress empowers state level leadership, takes them to Delhi to work in Delhi office, and it goes on back and forth. To say that Congress party stopped recruiting young people, stopped giving opportunity to young people, is not at all true. In fact, Rajiv Gandhi created a new Youth Congress and Youth Congress has been given huge responsibility including in asking to fight elections.

But it needs more effort in creating these regional satraps…

Regional satraps is something else. Giving opportunity to state level leaders, to rise up, is something else. The Congress party gives opportunity to state level leaders.

So in this election, do you think the Sena stands to gain from this break-up, when it can play victim as a regional party that was dumped by a national party?

I think there will be a serious division of votes of the so called communal parties or Hindutva parties which will give an advantage to Congress and the secular parties. Because that vote is going to be split.

And how far do you think Modi magic will work in Maharashtra?

I think it’s already evaporated as the by-election results show.

But you don’t think that Mr Modi campaigning will again draw people to the BJP?

That’s neither here nor there because Mr Modi is not going to be the Chief Minister of Maharashtra. Even if we grant for a minute that he’s doing well, which he is not. I mean there is nothing to write home about his first six months in office. So where is he going to be the face of the leadership in Maharashtra? You can’t ask for votes in the name of Mr Modi because he is not going to be the Chief Minister. And the BJP has a disadvantage that it has not been able to project anyone as a possible chief ministerial candidate. It is a big disadvantage.

So is Mr Modi not a factor in this election in Maharashtra?

No I don’t think so. He’ll appeal. He of course will appeal that please vote for the same party as in Delhi. But that’s not how the people will vote.

And what would be the Congress party’s agenda?

Development. Our performance of the last 15 years. And, particularly, we inherited a broken economy in 1999, when SS-BJP was defeated by people after one and half years of experience. We took over as a party that inherited this economy. We brought Maharashtra today to the number one position.

But who would you be fighting? NCP, BJP, Sena?

It will differ from constituency to constituency. There will be one major party who will be pitching against another.

There seems to be a feel good factor for the Modi government…

But not delivering…

Doesn’t the Congress really have its back against the wall?

Every election, you have to take it seriously and you have to fight. We fight on issues. We fight on the dangers of a party like Shiv Sena being allowed to lead the state. We also tell people about the dangers of a party like BJP being allowed to lead the state with their real agenda. I think our development record, inclusive development record, is for people to see.

But there’s no evidence of Mr Modi’s popularity diminishing…

That’s what the media says. But in the eyes of the people, they are not going to accept Mr Amit Shah’s diktat. People blame Mr Amit Shah’s style of politics for breaking of the alliance of the Shiv Sena and the BJP. The arrogance of power after the Lok Sabha elections is definitely to be seen in the BJP.

But no evidence of Mr Modi’s popularity diminishing or Rahul Gandhi’s popularity rising…

You don’t discount the by-election results.

Despite that what is the edge that the Congress has?

The fact is that Modi magic is not working in state level elections. Now that was the Lok sabha by-elections. I think there was an anger against UPA II, people manifested that anger by voting out UPA II and bringing an alternative government. And that’s that. Now each state election is a different election.

Criticism against the Congress is that there has been no soul searching, no new concrete plans…

There is no magic wand. Or that you sit together in a closed room for a couple of days and suddenly a magic wand will come. There’s nothing but hard work. I think we have to go back to the roots, constituency by constituency, and find out where we failed to motivate people, why did people not work with us, why did youth turn away. And this is a very complex introspection process which is going on. To say that we have done nothing is not true.

Are you optimistic for this election and do you think the Congress could play a part in forming the next government?

Absolutely. Yes. There’s a possibility that people...one thing I am optimistic of is the results of the Lok Sabha elections which went beyond anybody’s wild expectations. One party got a clear and absolute majority. Nobody had thought of it. People of course were saying 182 for the BJP. Of course people gave BJP a majority. And the fact that the people voted a majority government tells us people want a stable government and the same thing will happen in Maharashtra. If five parties are fighting in an election, and every party gets a few seats, then there’s a mess. I think people will vote one party and perhaps a national party. And there are only two national parties in the fray, BJP and us. Maharashtra has a basic Congress DNA and will go for us.

If you fall short of numbers, what are the possibilities of alliances?

Am not counting on that possibility at all. I am just going to make sure that we get absolute majority on our own.

Would you go with the NCP?

No point in speaking hypothetically or answering What Ifs. We will go for a win.

Can there be an NCP-Congress alliance post poll?

I can’t say that at the moment. They have broken an alliance with us, it is a move that they must have calculated, they must have calibrated the move very finely. What they do in the future, I can’t tell.

But tying up with the NCP is not a total no-no?

I think that will be decided at that time. In case such a situation arises, there will have to be discussions with the central leadership on what is to be done. I am not the one to decide that here. It has to be decided in consultation with Delhi. I am hoping and counting on the possibility that we get an absolute majority which is not unthinkable in the current scenario. People wanting to vote a stable government, a one party government and the split in the vote pattern, and the BJP not being able to project a clear leader—people will go in our favour.

How do you see the Sena-BJP break up?

Definitely reflects an arrogance on part of the BJP. They have dumped an ally of long which was their junior ally. They were the senior partner. And virtually Shiv Sena held their hands and brought them to a semblance of respectability. And Bal Thackeray supported Mr Modi personally. There’s a lot of heart burn in Shiv Sena, as you heard in yesterday’s meeting. There is anger among Shiv Sainiks.

How does it reflect on the Sena?

It’s the BJP who broke the alliance. Not Shiv Sena.

A shorter, edited version of this interview appears in print