Kalmadi Countdown

With the Commonwealth Games debacle near complete, the knives are out for Kalmadi in his home base.

For any politician, there comes a day when nobody wants to trade places with you. For Suresh Kalmadi, it has been days and weeks together that this has been the case. Nobody wants to be in his shoes—not for all the power and prestige that a ruling party’s Member of Parliament commands in Delhi, nor for all his fame and fortune. As if his headache as chairman of the organising committee of the Commonwealth Games (CWG) was not bad enough, he now has to watch his back as daggers are drawn against him in his home constituency of Pune.

This city in Maharashtra has always had an anti-Kalmadi camp within the local Congress unit. It’s a camp that saw its numbers swell after Kalmadi was fielded as the party’s Lok Sabha candidate over a number of other aspirants for the ticket. With the CWG looking set to be a fiasco, what was once the odd grumble is fast turning into vocal opposition.

Their objective is to loosen Kalmadi’s stranglehold over the Pune unit, alleged to have been ‘choking’ the local Congress. “It is as if there is going to be much more elbow space now,” says a relieved Anant Gadgil, former spokesperson of the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee and son of Barrister Vittalrao Gadgil, who had been a Pune parliamentarian for five consecutive terms. An embittered rival of Kalmadi, he was keen to contest the Pune seat in the last general election, but found himself turned down. 

“Why does the High Command listen only to Kalmadi?” asks Gadgil, “Every time I opposed him, my wings were clipped. I have been in the party for 18 years and have stayed loyal throughout. But the High Command has not been able to accommodate me. Each time, Kalmadi is given a ticket. Even after he quit the Congress, formed the Pune Vikas Agadi and took BJP support in the 1998 Lok Sabha elections and then came back, he was given a party ticket for the next Lok Sabha polls. Why? Everybody has money, so why only him?”

If Gadgil feels free to speak out now, it’s largely because of a rapid depletion in Kalmadi’s local power base, with the politician’s own supporters unsure if he can extricate himself from the CWG mess; that his popularity has taken a beating is evident from the fact that grassroots workers who aided his 2009 campaign are now fleeing in droves to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). “Yes, Congressmen are definitely opting for the NCP,” admits Gadgil. 

This is especially galling for Kalmadi, who has been running a decade-long feud with Ajit Pawar, nephew of NCP Chief Sharad Pawar and also irrigation minister in Maharashtra’s Congress-NCP coalition government. 

It’s well known that Ajit Pawar has taken an aggressive interest in reducing the Congress’ clout in the Pune Municipal Corporation, over which Kalmadi has held sway for years. A loss of influence here would hurt all the more because of the free hand the Congress High Command appears to have given him in its operations. But with disgruntled Congressmen willing to act in concert with Ajit Pawar, such an eventuality looks very likely right now.

Kalmadi’s big opponents include Ulhas Pawar, Mohan Joshi, Sharad Ranpise and Balasaheb Shivakar. Just before the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the four of them had met Congress President Sonia Gandhi, urging her to look beyond Kalmadi while picking the party’s Pune candidate. They claim they were assured that this would be done. But nothing came of it, really.

Among the keenest to have Kalmadi’s nose rubbed into the ground is Mohan Joshi, a one-time close confidant who came to feel his own political ambitions stifled by the big man. After leaving Kalmadi’s sphere of influence, he went on to become a city unit chief of the Congress and a Legislative Council member. All this has given him some stature within the party’s local unit. 

Yet, Mohan Joshi’s pleas in Delhi against Kalmadi have somehow always been cries in the wilderness.

If there’s good news from Delhi for the anti-Kalmadi camp, it’s that they have a Union Cabinet ally in Union Minister for Heavy Industries Vilasrao Deshmukh, who, sources say, cannot forgive what he saw as a Kalmadi-led campaign against him while he was Chief Minister of Maharashtra. In a recent move that struck observers for its vehemence, Deshmukh banned all public sector units under his ministry’s control from sponsoring the CWG.

When news of Kalmadi’s CWG problems first broke, Pune’s print media went to town printing all manner of allegations against him, adding to his discomfiture. 

According to media insiders, it was like a dam break. After years of restraint, given the man’s clout with media bosses, they finally had a chance to go after him. “We printed as much as possible,” says a senior reporter of Sakal, a Pawar family-owned paper, “After all, people have the right to know about the doings of their elected representative.” 

Among the charges against Kalmadi is that he has actively drawn criminals into Pune politics. Confronted on this, the MP has always sought recourse to the letter of the law: that these people are “only accused, not convicted”. But people remain wary of Anil Sadashiv Jadhav, a party nominee for the last municipal polls who has 14 registered cases to his name, including charges of assault, rioting, arson and attempt to murder. 

Then there is Vatsala Andekar, former Pune mayor and diehard Kalmadi supporter who has attempt-to-murder and other charges registered against her at the city’s Khadak Police Station. According to the police, she is part of Pune’s dreaded Andekar gang that 

includes her brothers and other kin. Local Congressmen have grown hoarse complaining about her lack of education and extreme aggression, but to little avail. Though these cases were lodged against her before she joined the Congress, Vatsala terms the charges against her “a political conspiracy”. 

Vatsala is among a string of women mayors of Pune who owe their ascent to Kalmadi’s favour. The city’s first ever woman mayor, Vandana Chavan (now with the NCP), was his find. She was followed by Kamal Vyaware, Vatsala Andekar and Dipti Chaudhary. 

Male Congressmen, say Kalmadi’s last few defenders (he himself was unavailable to Open for comment), haven’t been able to deal with this.

Some of the current battle, goes the talk of the town, is the continuing fallout of Suresh Kalmadi’s political break-up with Sharad Pawar about a decade ago. When Pawar quit the Congress to form the NCP, observers expected Kalmadi to join him. But he stayed put. Being a former pilot, some suggest, Kalmadi guessed he could snuggle his way into the charmed circle of a famous former pilot’s widow, Sonia Gandhi. 

According to local rumours, Sharad Pawar has finally spotted a chance to lure away Kalmadi’s base of Pune supporters. Several Congress corporators and sundry local leaders are said to be ready to join the NCP, now that the games have hurt Kalmadi’s political prestige. 

You can expect even the slightest Ajit Pawar liaison with the anti-Kalmadi camp to make news.

Commonwealth GamesPuneSuresh Kalmadi