PUNE, 27 August 2006 — With the announcement of the decision of the Election Commission to hold the bypoll to the Rajya Sabha (upper house) in Maharashtra on Sept. 18, to fill the vacancy following the death of Nationalist Congress Party(NCP) member Vasant Chavan last month, decks have been cleared for Supriya Sule, the only child of federal agriculture minister and NCP President Sharad Pawar, who is backing her candidature.
The move to put the candidature of Supriya came as a surprise in the political arena of Maharashtra, as it was Shard Pawar, who in the past had opposed dynastic politics in the Congress. NCP party workers were exerting pressure on Pawar to support the candidature of his daughter for the vacant Parliament seat, but Pawar had then told them that since Chavan was a Dalit, it would be only fair to field a Dalit candidate. But now he backtracked, and has revised his opinion and is backing his daughter.
Pawar has dashed all hopes of his nephew Ajit Pawar, a Cabinet minister in the DF government in Maharashtra who was projecting himself as the political successor to Sharad Pawar.
Now it is known that it would be his daughter Supriya Sule who would be his political heir, and not Ajit Pawar. Supriya who had not evinced any interest in politics until a few weeks ago, was suddenly inducted into the party and appointed to the organization’s national council, which had unnerved her cousin Ajit’s camp. Supriya was considered as a strong contender along with her cousin Ajit to succeed the Maratha strongman.
When Arab News asked her whether she was the political heir to her father, at a function in Baramati, her hometown, Supriya said, “Wait. Only time would decide whether I would be the political heir to my father. There was no ‘meaning’ to the discussion now.”
The Congress might give a hard time to the NCP, and announce it nominee for the seat, as an opportunity to settle old scores and revenge for the June debacle, in which the NCP supported industrialist Rahul Bajaj, an independent candidate against the Congress candidate, who lost to Bajaj, but in the final analysis te Congress may end up supporting Supriya Sule, the NCP candidate.
In another political development, which may upset the apple cart of the Shiv Sena, three Sena legislators, Manikrao Kokate from Sinnar in Nashik district, Ashok Kale from Kopargaon in Ahmednagar, and Vinayak Nimhan from Pune are to quit the Sena and seek re-election on Congress tickets. All the three legislators are supporters of former Sena leader Narayan Rane, who presently is a Congress minister in the DF government in Maharashtra.
