Leader's arrest a big jolt for Congress

MUMBAI: The arrest of Suresh Kalmadi is a big jolt to the Congress in western Maharashtra. He is the first senior leader of the party in the state to be arrested for his alleged role in the Commonwealth Games (CWG) scam.
A senior Congress leader said the development will lead to a vacuum in Pune, the political nerve centre of western Maharashtra, and the party will have to project a new leader to take on the opposition as well as counter the moves by alliance partner Nationalist Congress Party.Pune will be soon face municipal elections.
Kalmadi's empire in Pune received a jolt after the last civic elections when deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar (of the NCP) developed a power-sharing formula with the saffron alliance to keep the Congress out. The formula, which is known as the Pune Pattern, is bothering the Congress a lot.
Kalmadi, who gathered political weight as a close confidant of Sharad Pawar in the early 1980s, distanced himself from him when he went close to former prime minister the late P V Narasimha Rao. Kalmadi is known as a floor manager who helped the Congress preserve its base in Pune and other parts of the state after Pawar formed the NCP. Right from the beginning, senior Congress leaders had objected to Kalmadi's way of functioning, but the party ignored their objections since he was proving effective. Also, he remained on the right side of the party high command.
The Congress's other fear is that in the aftermath of Anna Hazare's fast in New Delhi, anti-corruption forces in the state have been strengthened, which would damage the party's prospects. Already, the BJP and the Sena are demanding that the Congress must ask Kalmadi to resign from Parliament. But Congress managers do not want to take such a drastic step till the court gives its verdict in the CWG case.
Precedence is on the Congress's side: many senior politicians, including Sharad Pawar, A R Antulay and Shivajirao Patil Nilangekar, were the subjects of court cases, but they wriggled out. Antulay went all the way to the Supreme Court to get a clean chit.
Due to Anna Hazare's agitations , some of the Shiv Sena and BJP ministers like Shashikant Sutar and Mahadeo Shivankar had to resigns from the court but none of them faced court cases and resulted into their arrest.