Maharashtra govt formation: 1980, 2014, and now — Pawar the key figure
President’s Rule was imposed in the state for the first time on February 17, 1980. The government of the day had completed one-and-a-half years in power.
NCP chief Sharad Pawar, party leader Praful Patel and Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge at YB Chavan centre in Mumbai, on Tuesday. (Express Photo by Ganesh Shirsekar)
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THIS IS the third time that Maharashtra has come under President’s Rule since the state was formed in 1960. And in all three instances, NCP chief Sharad Pawar has been the central figure.
Furthermore, this is the first time when President’s Rule has been imposed after poll results were declared and parties failed to stake claim for government formation.
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President’s Rule was imposed in the state for the first time on February 17, 1980. The government of the day had completed one-and-a-half years in power. The central rule lasted 112 days, till June 8. Sharad Pawar was the then chief minister and was dismissed by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who had returned to power after the Emergency.
In 1978, Pawar was with the Congress, which had won the state Assembly elections that year. The Congress made Vasantdada Patil the chief minister. This upset Pawar. Five months after Vasantdada’s government came to power, Pawar parted ways with the Congress and floated the Indian National Congress (Socialist).
“He joined hands with the Janata Party, toppled the Vasantdada government and at 38, became the youngest chief minister,” says veteran Congress leader Ulhas Pawar.
He added that Sharad Pawar would not have lost his chief ministership had he returned to the Congress. “Congress leader Sanjay Gandhi had urged Sharad Pawar to return to the Congress. I was present at the meeting where Sanjay made the offer. However, Janata Party leaders like Chandrashekhar dissuaded Sharad Pawar from doing so, which resulted in the dismissal of his government by Indira,” he said.
The second time, when President’s Rule was imposed in the state in 2014, the government had almost completed its five-year term with elections two weeks away.
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It was imposed on September 28, 2014 and remained in place till October 31, 2014. It was imposed after the then chief minister Prithviraj Chavan submitted his resignation to Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao after the 15-year-old Congress-NCP alliance in the state fell apart. Then President Pranab Mukherjee had signed the proclamation for imposition of central rule in Maharashtra.
Chavan had resigned merely two weeks before the state went to polls after the Sharad Pawar-led NCP called off its alliance with it alleging that the chief minister had stalled talks over seat sharing arrangements. “We had that time tried our best to convince the Congress but could not do so and, therefore, were left with no option but to quit the government,” recalls Congress leader Gopal Tiwari.
Congress leader Sachin Sawant recalled that the NCP’s decision to break away from the alliance came an hour after the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance fell apart. “Not just that, NCP leaders even went to the Governor and told him that the party was withdrawing its support to the Prithviraj government,” he said.
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
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