MAHARASHTRA GETS A CHIEF MINISTER - FINALLY

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 MUMBAI 002316

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE
(CORRECTED COPY)

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PINR PREL IN
SUBJECT: MAHARASHTRA GETS A CHIEF MINISTER - FINALLY

REF: A) MUMBAI 2179; B) MUMBAI 2189

Summary:
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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