Chavan, Kalmadi fired

Adarsh , CWG scams take their toll on Congress leaders

Maharashtra Governor K Sankaranarayanan accepted Chavan’s resignation and asked him to continue in a care-taker capacity till arrangements are made to swear-in a new ministry, a Raj Bhavan communique said.

Union Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office Prithviraj Chavan appears to have emerged frontrunner for the chief minister’s post. The other names which are doing the rounds include Union ministers Sushil Kumar Shinde and Vilasrao Deshmukh, besides AICC general secretary Mukul Wasnik. State leaders Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, Balasaheb Thorat and Harshavardhan Patil are also in the race.

Meeting

As the first head rolled, senior Congress leaders, including party chief Sonia Gandhi, Maharashtra in-charge in the AICC A K Antony, Pranab Mukherjee and Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel held a meeting to take stock of the situation arising out of Chavan’s ouster and name a successor. After the meeting, which lasted over an hour, Mukherjee told reporters that Antony and he were immediately proceeding to Mumbai, where Congress legislators also met to elect Chavan’s successor.

Mukherjee and Antony, who had “looked into” the allegations concerning Chavan, were appointed central observers for the Maharashtra Congress Legislature Party which met around 10 pm to elect a new leader.

Finding the Chavan episode the right moment to act against other party leaders tainted by corruption allegations, the Congress also axed Commonwealth Games Organising Committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi as secretary of its Parliamentary Party.

AICC General Secretary Janardan Dwivedi said Kalmadi’s resignation as the CPP secretary had been accepted with immediate effect.  The Congress decision to sack Chavan and Kalmadi was politically expedient, considering the BJP’s threat to paralyse parliamentary business over the issue of corruption in the Adarsh Society and in Games-related projects.

But it was also political expediency that held back the Congress from seeking any action against DMK leader and Telecom Minister A Raja whom the Comptroller and Auditor General held responsible for questionable 2G spectrum allotment over which a report is scheduled to be tabled in Parliament this session.

Embarrassing moment

In the past, Raja has held that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had full knowledge of the 2G spectrum allotments, a charge that embarrassed the Congress a good deal.

Soon after Obama left India for the remainder of his South-East Asia tour and just hours before Parliament was to meet for the commencement of its winter session, Sonia conveyed to Chavan the acceptance of his resignation and directed him to quit office.

After resigning, Chavan addressed the press to emphasise that he did not use his office to seek unfair advantage in Adarsh Society, a claim which nobody is taking very seriously. “Acceptance of my resignation by the Congress does not prove my guilt in the Adarsh Housing Society scam,” he asserted.

 Chavan said his party has “high moral values”, and that he is “100 per cent certain” that he will be proved innocent by different inquiries into his role in the controversy. Chavan had come under intense criticism for allegedly forcing the Adarsh Society, supposedly meant for Kargil war heroes, widows, and serving and retired defence personnel, to change its bye-laws to accommodate civilians, a euphemism for nominees of powerful state politicians and bureaucrats who wanted to exploit the gold mine for personal benefit.

As such, Chavan publicly admitted that three of his relatives –his late mother-in-law, brother-in-law and sister-in-law, all from his wife’s side–were allotted plush apartments at dirt cheap price in the Adarsh tower, located in upscale Colaba of Mumbai, where prices could be anywhere between Rs 8 crore and Rs 9 crore for apartments the same dimension as in Adarsh.

Not only Chavan, but several other politicians like Union Industries Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, Maharashtra Revenue Minister Narayan Rane and others, as well as bureaucrats who processed the Adarsh file, were also allegedly benefited through allotments either to their relatives or associates, or in case of bureaucrats, directly to them.

Media investigations suggested that even retired top Army officers colluded with politicians and senior bureaucrats to corner flats in Adarsh Society. Not only that, the Adarsh construction was without required environmental clearances. Two months ago, the Navy and the Army objected to the building on the ground that it will give occupants a clear view of defence installations along Mumbai’s coast.

Chavan was the Revenue minister when the Adarsh Society was sanctioned special benefits — he ordered its expansion to allow close to 30 additional flats by gifting to the building land reserved for a bus depot. Chavan was appointed chief minister in December 2008 after Vilasrao Deshmukh resigned in the backdrop of the November 26, 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

After the Adarsh scandal broke, Sonia summoned Chavan to New Delhi, demanding an explanation and formed the Antony-Mukherjee committee to probe the matter.  The committee’s report says that Chavan’s family directly benefited from the scam. But it could not find any evidence against former chief ministers Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sushil Kumar Shinde. The committee is understood to have said in its report that Deshmukh’s and Shinde’s involvement was procedural.

When Chavan went to Delhi 10 days back, he offered to resign but was asked to continue to avoid any last minute embarassment while Obama was in Mumbai. When Obama arrived, Chavan did put up a brave face, welcoming him at the airport and later again meeting him at the Oberoi-Trident hotel during a business meet.