Newsmaker: Former Maharashtra CM Ashok Chavan now in a safe house

With the Bombay HC denying permission to prosecute the former Maharashtra CM in the Adarsh housing scam, he is now in a position of make a renewed bid for a Congress comeback

In Marathi there is a saying that a blind man prays for one eye, and God gives him two. Former Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan is out of the woods with the Bombay High Court quashing the governor’s permission to prosecute him in what has come to be known as the Adarsh housing scam. The timing is perfect. The opposition in Maharashtra is upbeat in the wake of the Assembly election results in neighbouring Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah’s home state, where the BJP had a narrow squeak.

Chavan, who was made Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee chief some two years ago, was hamstrung in galvanising the party to take on the BJP-led alliance in the state because his alleged role in the Adarsh scam, for which he had lost his chief ministership in 2010, had been a constraining factor.

There were complaints to Sonia Gandhi (when she was party chief) that if the party was to made active in the state, Chavan needed to be removed. Friend-turned-foe Narayan Rane was at the forefront of that campaign but, ironically, he is the one who has now left the party.

Chavan hails from a family of Congressmen. Being the only son of the late S B Chavan, who too was Maharashtra chief minister and Union minister, he inherited his political legacy and therefore knows the Congress way of politics. “When the time is unfavourable, one has to lie low” is one principle of this politics, which Chavan, 59, adopted after his ouster as chief minister. 

Though his detractors were at work and Prithviraj Chavan, who succeded him, not very helpful, Chavan stayed patient and the Lok Sabha polls showed that he was no pushover. He was among the two Congress candidates who won among the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra. The party was decimated, but Chavan defended the family bastion of Nanded in the Marathwada region.

Politics in Maharashtra is changing. The Shiv Sena, despite sharing power with the BJP in the state and the Centre, is irritated at the conduct of Modi and Shah and is feeling cornered. Saamna, the Sena mouthpiece, has showered effusive praise on Rahul Gandhi after the Gujarat verdict. The biggest leader of Maharashtra — Sharad Pawar — is realising that his strategy of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds is unlikely to work in the changing situation. The Congress, on its part, displayed magnanimity in allowing the Maratha strongman to lead an opposition protest march to the Maharashtra Legislature in Nagpur on his birthday on December 12, sending signals that there was mutual benefit in unity.

Recent years and months have shown the party high command is relying on state leaders. While Chavan is the state party chief, former minister Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil is the leader of the Opposition, his rival in native Ahmednagar district and former minister Balasaheb Thorat was made chairman of the AICC screening committee for the just-concluded Gujarat polls, and Gurudas Kamat was for some time AICC general secretary in charge of Gujarat.
 

Chavan had recently remarked that if the polls were held in the state today, the BJP would finish fourth in view of its “misrule”. At this crucial juncture, he is in a key position and well-placed to take on the BJP government in the state.