It took nine soporific months for the Congress to realise where it was sitting—on the opposition benches. Enron, the eviction of Bangladeshis and renaming of cities passed by without much protest. But last week the Congress finally spun into top gear, inspired by an old one-liner: "Dal mein kuchch kala hai."
The last days of the state legislature's winter session in Nagpur saw tempers rise, as Civil Supplies Minister Shobha Phadnavis found herself at the centre of a dal purchase scandal. The Congress showered her with accusations of purchasing pulses without inviting tenders and at prices higher than the open market rates. It is not uncommon for an opposition party to rake up this kind of controversy, but then the Congress has been silent for so long. As former minister Ramrao Adik lamented at the beginning of the session: "We seem to forget we are not the ruling party; so many opportunities have slipped by."
Having finally woken up to the opportunity, Congressmen are now making the most of the Rs 28-crore scam and are insisting on a CBI inquiry. They gleefully talk of a murky deal and have distributed photocopies of Phadnavis' conversation with grain traders. The Congress charge: 22,635 metric tonnes of chana dal and 15,000 metric tonnes of tur dal were bought from the National Consumers' Co-operative Federation without inviting tenders, and above the prevailing open market rates. Phadnavis' explanation: the whole exercise was conducted in a hurry to beat the shortage of the commodities and move them out to remote areas through the public distribution system before the festival season.
But the Opposition was not impressed. Neither did it buy the reasoning that the rates were a little over the market price (for instance, tur dal was procured at Rs 32.50 per kg, Rs 2.30 above the market rate) because they included transport charges. Her back-up, a letter from the Union civil supplies minister stating that essential commodities could be purchased from the federation as it functioned under the Central ministry, is also not keeping Congressmen at bay.
In the backrooms of the BJP, after a damage-control debate, it was decided that a judicial inquiry, which Chief Minister Manohar Joshi later announced, would be best. Says the BJP's State Organising Secretary Sharad Kulkarni: "To clear doubts we thought that a neutral agency unconnected with the party should go into the matter. We are sure of Shobhatai. At worst we can say she should have prepared better to face the legislature."
Congressmen won the round as the lady who set their pulses racing found selfdefence the only option in the Upper House where her partymen sat flustered and quiet. In the Lower House the ruling combine fought back, but showed none of the firepower they displayed at the beginning of the session when three Janata Dal MLAs who raised the Ayodhya issue got warnings like "Kashi, Mathura baki hain". The week clearly belonged to the Congress; they stalled proceedings for six days, brought in cloth banners, used T-shirts with slogans, and shouted home their point.
While Shobhatai complained that the Opposition was out to malign her without listening to the details and her partymen suggested that she should have spared them the details and cleared the main point, the Congress was simply giving the new Maharashtra regime a taste of its own medicine. Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde's year-long campaign against Pawar's "criminalisation of politics'', the strident BJP chorus on Pawar's corruption scandals and G.R. Khairnar's crusade all found their mark. The beating the former chief minister's image took helped remove Pawar and his party from power. Never mind that Joshi said in a TV interview (on Aap ki Adalat) that Khairnar who had talked of truckloads of evidence against Pawar "didn't even bring enough evidence to put on a bicycle''.
As for Phadnavis, who is a champion of local causes in her native Chandrapur district, she has found that leading agitations and morchas at the rural level is one thing and defending multi-crore purchases in the state legislature another. "It is her first time as a minister, which is why she left loopholes in her statement allowing the Opposition to get at her. Actually there was no violation of routine," says a party leader who was among those who decided that a judicial inquiry was necessary to banish suspicion, especially with polls ahead.
For the Congress it has been a shot in the arm. Says MPCC spokesman Ratnakar Mahajan: "Nine months is a long time to get over the shock of losing the state." But will the party maintain the momentum?
