US embassy cable - 04MUMBAI2316

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 MUMBAI 002316 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
(CORRECTED COPY) 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV, PINR, PREL, IN, Indian Domestic Politics 
SUBJECT: MAHARASHTRA GETS A CHIEF MINISTER - FINALLY 
 
REF: A)  MUMBAI 2179; B)  MUMBAI 2189 
 
Summary: 
-------------- 
1. (SBU) In a sudden change of course following a long day of 
backroom politicking, Congress selected Vilasrao Deshmukh as the 
new Chief Minister (CM) of Maharashtra late on October 29.  The 
choice was a surprise to most observers in the state who had 
expected outgoing CM Shinde to retain the job.  However, 
Congress dropped Shinde and selected Deshmukh late in the 
evening of the 29th after learning that its coalition partner, 
the NCP, had selected R.R. Patil to fill the deputy Chief 
Minister position allocated to it as part of the Congress/NCP 
power sharing arrangement.  Congress parliamentarians feared 
that Shinde would be too weak to counter the strength of both 
the resurgent NCP and the charismatic Patil.  Deshmukh is 
considered a strong politician who is not afraid of standing up 
to both the NCP and, in particular, its leader Sharad Pawar. 
Pawar had been taking an increasingly aggressive line towards 
Congress following his party's strong showing in the Maharashtra 
elections.  The vote marks the return to power of Deshmukh, who 
was CM of Maharashtra from 2001-2003 before resigning amid 
scandals and party disappointment at his performance. 
Biographies of the two new leaders are included at the end of 
this cable.  End summary. 
 
Congress and NCP Elect Leaders 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
 
2. (SBU) In a surprise vote that followed a day of backroom 
discussions of Congress officials in both Mumbai and Delhi, 
Deshmukh edged out the previous favorite, outgoing CM Shinde. 
The Congress central leadership ultimately chose the candidate 
because it felt it needed a strong and forceful personality to 
stand up to the NCP in the state and to NCP national president 
and Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar in particular. 
Throughout the day Deshmukh had also lobbied heavily on his own 
behalf with both the newly elected Congress members of the state 
parliament and with the Party central leadership. 
 
3. (SBU) The vote marks the return to power of Deshmukh, who was 
CM of Maharashtra from October 2001 to January 2003 as part of 
the Congress-NCP Democratic Front government.   Congress edged 
him out of power due to a series of corruption scandals, 
lackluster performance by the Congress party in the district and 
local elections and the escapades of his eldest son, an aspiring 
actor whose antics became a source of embarrassment for the 
party in the media. 
 
Congress Reacts to News from NCP Camp 
--------------------------------------------- -------------------- 
 
4. (SBU) Congress only elected Deshmukh after it received word 
that its coalition partner, the NCP, had chosen R.R. Patil as 
its state parliamentary leader.  In a secret ballot earlier in 
the day, the NCP's newly elected representatives to the state 
parliament had selected Patil over two rival candidates.  Patil, 
responsible for the home and rural development portfolios in the 
outgoing Congress/NCP government, is a member of the politically 
dominant and numerically significant Maratha caste in 
Maharashtra.  Upon hearing about his election, Congress 
legislators in Maharashtra prevailed upon emissaries from the 
central leadership in Delhi to approve Deshmukh, as only he was 
seen as charismatic enough to counter R.R. Patil's leadership. 
 
Outgoing CM Shinde Long Considered a Shoo-in 
--------------------------------------------- -------------- 
-------------- 
 
5. (SBU) The press as well as most of our contacts, including 
all interlocutors from the various political parties in the 
state with whom we spoke during the October 28-29 visit of 
SA/INS desk officer James Seevers, expected that Congress needed 
to keep a Dalit caste person in the CM position, at least until 
the next round of state elections early in 2005.  Incumbent 
chief minister Shinde, a Dalit, remained the frontrunner as a 
result, and his election was considered a foregone conclusion as 
soon as it became clear that Congress would keep the CM 
portfolio.  Congress needed a Dalit, so the consensus opinion 
ran, to reward the Dalit vote in the state elections and to 
strengthen its position with Dalit voters in the upcoming state 
elections where Congress fears competition for the BSP party. 
 
6. (SBU) In the end, however, Congress decided that the 
potential weakening of its support in the Maratha caste in the 
state was a greater risk than losing the Dalit vote.  Dashmukh, 
himself a member of the Maratha caste, quickly became a favored 
candidate.  In addition, Congress had begun to feel the pressure 
of a resurgent NCP that had forcefully defended its interests 
after emerging from the state elections with the largest single 
faction in the state parliament.  Pundits say Shinde lost out 
because he was perceived to be totally lacking the killer 
instinct, and too close to NCP leader Pawar.  Dashmukh is not 
only known as a strong leader, but also has a history of 
standing up to Pawar.  Dashmukh is known to relish in "baiting" 
the NCP leader, as one local columnist wrote over the weekend. 
 
Two Weeks of Wrangling Weaken Congress, Create Derision 
--------------------------------------------- -------------- 
---------------------------------- 
 
7. (SBU) After winning Maharashtra election (ref A), the two 
major alliance partners wrangled for nearly two weeks over the 
composition of the new government.  Although the NCP eventually 
accepted Congress' claim to the position of Chief Minister, the 
parties could not establish a final consensus over the number of 
deputy CM slots the NCP would get in return for accepting a 
Congress politician in the top jobs.  Media pundits and 
political observers speculated about the reasons for the 
wrangling (ref B).  In the public sphere, Congress began to 
appear as an embattled party fighting to hold onto its turf in 
the face of attacks by the emboldened NCP that had seized the 
political momentum in the state.  The protracted eleven-day 
public spectacle even produced public derision.  As one NCP 
functionary told us Friday, October 29 morning, "Thank God we 
are electing someone today, before we become complete laughing 
stocks." 
 
8. (SBU) Deshmukh and Patil took the oath of office on Monday, 
November 1.  Now that the two leaders are sworn in, the parties 
will begin negotiations over the remaining minister positions 
and portfolios in the new cabinet.  It is expected that about 10 
senior ministers will be named within the next two weeks.  The 
full 44 member cabinet will not likely be named until after the 
winter session of the state parliament. 
 
Bio: Vilasrao Deshmukh 
---------------------------------------- 
 
9. (SBU) Vilasrao Deshmukh (58) is from an elite Maratha family 
from the drought-prone Marathwada region of south-central 
Maharashtra.  At 23, he started his career as his village's 
elected headman, progressed to the state legislature in his 
mid-thirties and has been defeated only once (1995) in a 
directly contested election.  In state politics, Deshmukh has 
always been a Pawar detractor.  In various Congress governments 
in the state during the period 1982 to 1995, Deshmukh has 
handled important portfolios like agriculture, revenue, 
cooperation, industries, home, animal husbandry and education at 
various times.  He had led two abortive within-party coups 
against Sharad Pawar, in 1988 and 1990.  In 1996, he tried to 
get elected to the upper house of Maharashtra legislature using 
Shiv Sena support, but was unable to muster the requisite votes 
from his own Congress party.  In the 1999-2004 Congress-NCP 
Democratic Front government of Maharashtra Deshmukh was chief 
minister from October 2001 to January 2003, when he was edged 
out because of corruption scandals, lackluster performance by 
the Congress party in the district and tehsil level elections 
(like County and City elections) and the escapades of his eldest 
son aspiring to be an actor, which were increasingly making 
media headlines. 
 
Bio:  Raosaheb Ramrao Patil 
--------------------------------------------- -- 
 
10. (SBU) Raosaheb Ramrao Patil is 50.  Born into a very poor 
Maratha family in the Anjani tehsil (administrative unit 
consisting of 100 villages) of sugar-cane-rich Sangli district, 
he completed his college education (an undergraduate degree in 
humanities and a lawyer's diploma) in nearby town of Tasgaon, at 
times eating only once a day to save money.  The then 
Maharashtra chief minister Vasantdada Patil spotted R. R. 
Patil's leadership potential and brought him into electoral 
politics.  R.R. Patil was elected to the Sangli district council 
in 1979 when he was only 25 years old, very young by the 
standards of Indian electoral politics.  In 1990, 1995, 1999 and 
2004 he was elected to the Maharashtra state legislature. 
During the Shiv Sena/ Bharatiya Janata Party led government from 
1995 to 1999, Patil was one of the most effective opposition 
representatives to use "call attention motions" (a parliamentary 
device) to focus attention on corrupt practices of that 
government's ministers.  In his home-district, even today he is 
affectionately called "call attention" Patil. 
11. (SBU) When the first Congress/NCP coalition government took 
oath in October 1999, Patil was given the rural development 
portfolio, which no one else wanted.  He designed a "village 
 
cleanliness campaign", in which all of the state's 36,000 odd 
villages could participate, each village defining what 
cleanliness meant for its inhabitants.  The transparent judging 
process yielded amazing results.  Some villages built drainage 
systems, some houses for the homeless and some schools, and some 
even designed websites, using their own labor and government 
allotted village level funds.  The World Bank concluded in 2002 
that the scheme generated about 2.1 million dollars of rural 
asset creation in its first two years of operation.  Two other 
neighboring states Madhya Pradesh and Rajsthan emulated the 
scheme. 
 
12. (SBU) In December 2002, NCP nationalist president Sharad 
Pawar appointed R. R. Patil the state unit president of the 
party and in December 2003, Patil was also given the state home 
portfolio (the police force comes under this), when the Mumbai 
police was rocked by a tax-evasion scandal known as the Telgi 
scam implicating highest level of officials, possibly the home 
minister himself.  The NCP's then deputy chief minister and home 
minister Chhagan Bhujbal had to resign over this scandal.   In 
the new administration too, R.R. Patil is expected to handle the 
home and rural development portfolios.  However, he might lose 
the state party president post to Bhujbal.  R.R. Patil's 
daughters still study in the no-fees government school in his 
village and his parents still work the family farm.  He reads 
late into the night and is never seen on the party circuit.  In 
April-June 2004, he made ingenious use of some alleged 
references to 17th century iconic Maratha king Shivaji in 
American Scholar James Laine's book (and ex-Prime Minister Atal 
Bihari Vajpayee's inferred defense of it) to polarize Maratha 
caste votes for his party.  Due to some unfortunate experiences 
in his undergraduate days at the hands of his Brahmin teachers, 
he is rumored to be strongly anti-Brahmin.  He is also rumored 
to be not very comfortable speaking English. 
 
Comment 
------------------- 
 
13. (SBU) The Maharashtra Congress party has been shaken to the 
core by the strong showing by an assertive NCP in the recent 
state elections.  A junior partner in the previous coalition 
(Congress 73, NCP 56) NCP emerged as the senior partner with 71 
legislators against Congress 69 this time round.   The last 
minute choice of the charismatic and combative Deshmukh over the 
"nice guy" Shinde shows the extent of Congress' concern about 
the strength of its coalition partner.   Each party's choice of 
a strong, charismatic personality as their leaders in the state 
is also a signal that their relationship will likely be rocky 
and perhaps even acrimonious when they begin to address the 
problems facing the state. 
 
 
SIMMONS