Scindia played historic role in state polls

pune: madhavrao scindia was not a frequent visitor to the city. but one of his most significant visits was in july 1999. the maratha-dominated politics of the state was playing out its familiar historic script of infighting. congress strongman sharad pawar had hoisted the flag of dissent by setting up the nationalist congress party (ncp) and both lok sabha and assembly elections were at hand.as party general secretary in charge of the state, scindia returned to the land of his ancestors to play an important role. a staunch sonia gandhi loyalist, his challenge was to mobilise the party to meet the threat posed by sharad pawar's newly-formed nationalist congress party. he focused his attention on the western maharashtra constituencies of satara, karad, sangli and kolhapur where pawar had a strong following. it was a historic coincidence that the gwalior-based maratha prince's ancestors came from this same region - satara district in western maharashtra. the congress's most prominent leaders converged on his base in the city, the hotel blue diamond's presidential suite, during his stay. besides senior congressmen like suresh kalmadi, mpcc chief prataprao bhosale, pawar's protege-turned-adversary ramakrishna more, another low-profile congressman was waiting to meet scindia. the man was none other than vilasrao deshmukh, just back from the political wilderness and, as it turned out, the man who would be king. barely five weeks later, deshmukh was sworn in as chief minister of maharashtra. during that visit, scindia rightly predicted that the party would not suffer a debacle in the absence of pawar. he averred that the congress would perform better than pawar's ncp in maharashtra. "we may not get as many as 33 seats as we did in the last lok sabha elections, but we will definitely do better than the ncp," he was quoted as saying in the times of india of july 24, 1999. pawar's influence, he has said, was limited to pockets of the state, and although he had caused a split in the party, much of the organisation was intact and that was important, scindia had rightly observed.