Pawar-Rane meeting stirs hornets nest

B D Narayankar

Pune: The secret meeting between Narayan Rane and Sharad Pawar on Monday in Pune has stirred a hornets nest in political sphere.

Sources say that the meeting was about creating a ground for Rane''s sons - Nitesh and Nilesh.

It is being said that Rane's elder son Nilesh is likely to contest for Lok Sabha from Sindhudurg constituency in Konkan, where his father has strong hold, and Nitesh would fight it out from a constituency in Mumbai.

The political aspirations of Nilesh and Nitesh are not hidden. In recent times, both were seen with their father in Swabhiman rally held in October last year in Mumbai.

Nilesh had reportedly said in the rally that there would not be two power centres and one would see political upmanship between him and Nitesh.
On the other hand, Nitesh is busy establishing his roots through Swabhiman Sanghatana, a social organisation. The three-year old organisation has presence in all the 35 districts in the state. Last Sunday, Nitesh inaugurated one of its offices in Pune too.

The function drew a sizable gathering of youths from the cross section of the society. The gathering saw Nitesh training his guns against the MNS without taking any names. "Pune is an education hub and students from outside will come to the city for higher education. We should welcome them. If anyone tries to disturb them, my volunteers will stand by them," he said.

When contacted, Nitesh said Swabhiman was purely a social organisation and had nothing to do with politics. "We will be initiating one youth - one vote campaign in every district. We will be going to college campuses in the backdrop of the Lok Sabha polls and appeal the youth to cast their vote," he said. "There are other programmes too like career guidance, traffic issues and unemployment. The whole idea is to motivate young people for better tomorrow," he added. Nitesh however refused to comment on the Pawar- Rane meeting.

"It was just a courtesy visit," Pawar on Wednesday said that suspended Congress leader Narayan Rane had given a courtesy visit to him on Monday evening, but ruled out any political discussion. "Rane was in Pune and just gave me a courtesy call. We did not have any political discussion," he said. However, the NCP chief said his guess is that Rane is mentally not prepared to go elsewhere and will stay in Congress. "It is good for the Congress-NCP alliance contesting the Lok Sabha polls," he said.