MUMBAI, January 4: Congress leader Sharad Pawar is unlikely to be left to himself to campaign for the Congress in Maharashtra during the Lok Sabha elections.The Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee has written to senior party leaders, including at least two former Chief Ministers and past presidents, that they must undertake a vigorous campaign alongside Pawar.
In case they are contesting the Lok Sabha themselves, they must be willing to campaign in at least three constituencies besides their own, they have been told.
MPCC president Ranjit Deshmukh today told The Indian Express that he had written letters to all senior Congressmen and sought from them suitable dates for their campaigns.
``I have asked them to convey to me their schedules for the campaigning so that we can draw up a concerted programme for the Lok Sabha campaign,'' Deshmukh said.
Among those he has written to are former Chief Ministers S B Chavan and Sudhakarrao NaiK and former MPCC president Sushil Kumar Shinde. At least
two of them are likely to be given tickets for the Lok Sabha elections but this does not mean that ``they should remain confined to their own constituencies,'' Deshmukh said.
It was not clear, however, if this bid for a joint campaign was at the behest of the party High Command or part of the MPCC's own initiative.
While a section of political observers chose to see this as an attempt to cut Pawar down to size, others described it as a shrewd move on the part of the Maratha warlord himself to contain all opposition to him within the party organisation.
Pawar has recently been under heavy onslaught of criticism vis-a-vis his allegedly diminishing campaign prowess. Detractors have begun to etch out the sliding graph of Congress in Maharashtra ever since Pawar was put in sole charge of the party campaigns.
In 1989-90-91, with Rajiv Gandhi still around, Pawar who emerged as the Congress' chief campaigner in Maharashtra, jointly secured less than 30 Lok Sabha seats and came up short of an absolute majority
in the Mahrashtra Legislative Assembly, though Rajiv's assassination took the Congress' LS tally from the state to 40 out of 48.
However, with the disappearance of a charistmatic leader at the Centre, Pawar's showing in the State Assembly was so poor that the Congress lost majority for the first time since Independence. The 1995 elections were fought and won by the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance on an anti-Pawar rather than an anti-Congress plank and Pawar had been the sole campaigner at the time with little role played by then MPCC president Shivajirao Deshmukh.
``Had he won a majority for the Congress, he would have been the uncrowned king of at least the State Congress. As such, he has had to shoulder the entire blame for the Congress' diminishing fortunes in Maharashtra, though the party has done much worse in other states,'' an observer said.
The Lok Sabha results in 1996 were no better with the Congress touching an all time low of 15 seats, losing heavily in its strongholds with several of and its
bastions coming tumbling down as safe seats in Vidarbha and Western Maharashtra were conceded to almost unknown entities from the Sena-BJP alliance.
Now, however, the MPCC directive is being seen as a double-edged sword that could cut both ways: deny Pawar the credit for a possible victory and distribute the blame in the event of defeat.
However, even a supposed move to cut Pawar down to size is looked upon with suspicion by many of his detractors who continue to see schemes behind the directive. One such suspicious Congressman said, ``If they spend too much time away from their constituencies, they could lose their own elections. If they don't campaign elsewhere and the Congress improves its position, Pawar will walk away with the accolades.''
The flip side of the coin, points out one observer, is that even Pawar might wish for more time in his constituency this time round.
His supporters have been steadily losing in the co-operative and local self-government bodies' elections over the past year. So
while there is still no formidable rival to Pawar, Baramati might not be such a cakewalk, after all, he adds.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
