Mumbai: In June 2014, Sharad Pawar, president of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), embarked on a road trip from Ahmedabad to a bungalow in the hill station of Mount Abu, where he reportedly spent three days as a guest of industrialist Gautam Adani.
The meeting, which neither participant spoke about publicly, took place just three months before assembly elections in Maharashtra. At the time, the parleys were seen as a sign that the NCP could be changing its equation with its longtime ally Congress, then in government in Maharashtra, and was aligning more closely to the BJP, which had just assumed power at the national level.
This did come to pass. Shortly before the assembly polls, the NCP parted ways with the Congress, and ultimately extended outside support to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to form a government in the state.
More than eight years on, the Pawar-Adani equation is raising questions again, even if political observers are not surprised.
Last week, octogenarian Pawar broke ranks with the Congress-led opposition and expressed support for the Adani Group in a candid interview with NDTV — which happens to be owned by the Gujarat-based conglomerate.
The NCP is currently part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), an alliance in Maharashtra of three opposition parties, the other two being the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and the Congress.
The latter has been alleging that the Modi government is protecting Adani ever since a January report by the US-based shortseller Hindenburg Research accused the Indian conglomerate of stock manipulation and other malpractices.
But when he spoke to NDTV on the controversy, Pawar said it seemed that an “individual industrial group of the country was targeted”.
He also rejected the opposition’s demand, led by the Congress, of having a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) probe into the allegations against Adani. Instead, he said that the Supreme Court has already set up an inquiry under a retired judge.
“Once the Supreme Court announced a committee for probing the matter, there was no need of a JPC (probe),” he said
While political insiders have long known about Pawar’s ties with Adani, it hasn’t always sat well with the Congress, especially when it is left guessing about its ally’s political motives.
The party has often chosen to “turn a blind eye” to Adani-Pawar ties, said a senior Maharashtra Congress functionary, but noted it isn’t always possible.
“Sometimes these parleys create mistrust, like now. To have relations with Adani is one thing, but this is like giving a signal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi that ‘I may be in the opposition, but I can support you on key issues’. Sharad Pawar is being calculative,” the functionary said.
NCP leaders, meanwhile, say Pawar has excellent relations with all industrialists, not just Adani.
Speaking to ThePrint, Majeed Memon, NCP Rajya Sabha MP, said Pawar’s implied support to Adani in this case may be “the result of his personal relationship outside of political compulsions”
“Sharad Pawar has been among the exceptional political leaders who can manage to keep cordial relations with all sides. He is known for making shocking statements in a political atmosphere and thereafter successfully getting out of criticism and justifying the same,” Memon said.
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Coal, power, ‘friendship’
Speaking to ThePrint, political commentator Pratap Asbe said Pawar has been close to Adani for decades and “was one of the first politicians to back the industrialist”. The two, he added, have been known to meet often.
“I don’t necessarily see any political messaging in these meetings,” Asbe said.
Nevertheless, the equation between Adani and Pawar has led to some fractious situations.
One instance was when Pawar was Union agriculture minister in the former Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) dispensation.
In 2013, Pawar had come out in support of the Adani Group after the UPA government cancelled coal mines allocated to the company near the Tadoba tiger reserve, following concerns that the activity may disturb the tiger habitat. The allocation of the coal blocks was cancelled during Congress leader Jairam Ramesh’s tenure as Union environment minister.
Around the same time, Pawar had also strongly pushed for the Adani Group’s power plant to come up at Gondia, the constituency that NCP leader Praful Patel hails from. In his autobiography Lok Maze Sangati, published in 2015, the NCP chief wrote how it was at his insistence that the Adani Group forayed into the business of thermal power.
Pawar has in the same book praised Adani as “hardworking, simple, and down to earth.”
Political posturing?
In 2021, when the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, in which the NCP was a partner, was in power in Maharashtra, there were rumours of a meeting between Pawar and Union Home Minister Amit Shah at the Adani residence in Ahmedabad. None of the parties concerned confirmed the meeting.
NCP’s Nawab Malik rejected suggestions of any such meeting, Shah cryptically told reporters “not everything can be made public”, and the then Maharashtra BJP chief Chandrakant Patil said Pawar and Shah might have met for “some work”.
The meeting, however, came at a time when the MVA dispensation was having constant clashes with the central government, and it raised questions of Pawar possibly holding political negotiations.
Speaking to ThePrint, Dr. Sanjay Patil, a researcher with Mumbai University, said Sharad Pawar’s relations with industrialists have never been a secret, but from time to time, there are indications of political posturing in his interactions with them.
“Sharad Pawar speaking in Adani’s favour despite the urgency for the MVA to stay together shows that there is some kind of political negotiation going on here,” he said.
“Sharad Pawar never says anything lightly and his support for Adani at this juncture takes some heft out of Rahul Gandhi’s campaign, and out of the MVA’s calls for unity,” he added.
In June last year, shortly before the collapse of the MVA government, Pawar had also hosted Adani in his hometown of Baramati while the billionaire industrialist was there to inaugurate a science park.
Pawar’s grand-nephew Rohit Pawar, an NCP MLA from Karjat Jamkhed, drove Adani to the event venue from the airport. Further, the entire Pawar family, including his daughter, Baramati MP Supriya Sule, and nephew, Baramati MLA Ajit Pawar, were present the entire day.
‘Everybody’s friend’ says NCP, Congress less sure
Sharad Pawar has close personal ties with all major industrialists and his relations with Adani should not come under particular scrutiny, said Jitendra Awhad, a senior NCP MLA from Maharashtra, speaking to ThePrint.
“That is what he is. You talk about any industrialist and Sharad Pawar will have his own personal relationship which he has developed over 60 years. This is how he got maximum projects when he was CM. The basic difference between Sharad Pawar and other politicians is that he has relations like family with everyone,” he said.
Awhad also recalled how the warring Bajaj brothers, Rahul and Shishir, had in 2002 trusted Pawar as their arbitrator. He added that Hindustan Construction Company’s Ajit Gulabchand is on “first-name basis” with Pawar and Nusli Wadia too counts the NCP chief as a close friend.
Another NCP leader who did not wish to be named said that Pawar is not on board with centring a political fight on an industrial. “Destroying (Adani’s) empire will only hurt the Indian economy,” he said.
Memon also underscored that Pawar’s only difference with the opposition is that he is not in favour of conducting a witch hunt or bringing undeserved disrepute to anyone.
Acknowledging that concerns had been raised about the Adani empire, Memon said that even Pawar was not averse to getting to the bottom of the issue.
“There are reports about several major deals in the past nine years with the current establishment and some doubts are raised as to whether the government was unduly and undeservedly kind to Adani, causing loss to the exchequer. All that the opposition leaders are asking is to have a thorough and honest search of truth in such allegedly dubious deals. I don’t think Sharad Pawar also would disagree with it,” Memon noted.
“The only difference of opinion is that he believes in the authenticity of the probe of the committee appointed by the Supreme Court over JPC, to which the Opposition leaders do not subscribe,” he added.
A senior Maharashtra Congress leader, however, said Pawar’s overtures caused some mistrust in the Congress-NCP alliance. “One never knows what his calculations or next moves are going to be,” he said.
“Sharad Pawar decided to break ranks with us, but more importantly, the way in which he did so — extending support to Adani in an interview to a channel owned by the group — was surprising,” he added.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
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