InterviewPrithviraj Chavan, Maharashtra’s chief minister until last week, is busy saying goodbye to his staff which has served him for almost four years. Chavan, 68, was sent to Mumbai in 2010 with a mandate from Sonia Gandhi to clean up the Adarsh mess. On Thursday, his coalition partner the NCP unceremoniously pulled support and announced a formal split prompting the governor to declare President’s rule in the state for a mere 18 days.And so the staff farewell.While the turn of the last few days has left a bitter aftertaste, Chavan also has much to be pleased about. For long considered an outsider in Maharashtra politics--“always the Delhi man”-- he goes into these elections as the face of the party.In a wide-ranging interview, he tackles allegations of delaying clearing of files, the legacy of corruption he carries, and the politics of coalition, saving his sharpest words for his former deputy, Ajit Pawar.The governor had given me a letter to continue as caretaker chief minister. I thought they would not go through the rigmarole of inviting other parties and President’s rule keeping in mind the totality of the Bommai judgment (referring to former Karnataka chief minister SR Bommai who won a landmark verdict in Supreme Court limiting conditions under which President’s rule can be imposed in states). But apparently they thought they would get political advantage…(pauses) This is a unique case with the code of conduct in place and just 15 days to go for election. It’s highly unusual.A Bitterness is there because the NCP could have decided not to go ahead with the alliance but… Anyway no one’s going to the office, or taking major policy decisions. So pulling the government down with a few days to go is quite surprising. We could have decided to fight against each other without bringing the government down. I don’t see any urgent need to do that. But time alone will tell if there was any need for them to do that.About the fact that they weren’t going with us, I was, but pulling the government down, I didn’t (half laughs) because it’s neither here nor there. No one is going to cling to the last hours of government. I don’t know if it’s bitterness or fear they have that if I was allowed to continue as CM something could happen.I don’t know. Anyway the decision on Ajit Pawar will have to be taken by the governor. So if there is a subtle understanding between the governor or a political party and NCP, I am not aware of it.I wouldn’t say rid of the NCP... That likeminded parties or otherwise that had fought bitter elections come together and shake hands as though nothing had happened (during elections) is quite unnatural in itself but the flip side is President’s rule or bureaucrat’s rule or to go for another election and that’s why a post poll alliance. One thing I am hopeful about now is that people voted decisively in the Lok Sabha which none of us expected and that’s because they got sick of alliance compulsions which led to so many things in UPA2 (United Progressive Alliance). We also know what happened here in Maharashtra….I won’t be surprised if in this election too people vote decisively. Preferably they will do so for a national party.I don’t buy the anti-incumbency argument at all. We won in 2004 in 2009. It’s how people perceive a government –as a good, clean, honest effort.People will discern that the totality of the government means all of us. The split is an opportunity-- the discerning voter will perhaps distinguish and differentiate.I’d like to say give Modi a chance, fine. But (giving) Modi’s party a chance is a different thing all together. Because somebody has to be CM, there has to be a face. The dilemma in the BJP is they cannot name anyone. It’s a dilemma we used to have many times when we were worried about infighting - and that’s the dilemma they are now faced with. The problem is the rest of the parties have clearly identified CM candidates. The Shiv Sena has one. The NCP, though they have not named the leader, we know who the leader is (Ajit Pawar). The Congress has asked me to lead the election. Only the BJP doesn’t have a CM candidate which is why saying give a chance to Mr Modi is different from saying give Mr Modi’s party a chance.To come back to the matter of anti-incumbency, take the example of the Lok Sabha elections. People were angry with UPA2 . But before that we did get a huge majority after UPA 1. So I don’t buy the argument that anti incumbency equals number of years in office. Rather it’s the perception that this set of people have or have not delivered. (Under UPA 2) What happened was a unique thing in the history of this country when cabinet ministers were marching to jail one after the other-- this had never happened before. This whole confusion about Mr Vinod Rai (the Comptroller and Auditor General, referring to 2G spectrum allocation) saying loss to the exchequer and people (within) saying zero loss. People got confused and angry as something was clearly wrong. For, if you are saying zero loss then why are people going to jail?Mr Modi smartly turned it into a Presidential style campaign knowing fully well that the Congress party was not prepared to name a prime ministerial candidate.Even if we had projected Mr Rahul Gandhi as PM upfront there would have been questions about his experience, or why he didn’t join the government. Rightly or wrongly we chose not to name and it’s something we need to analyse deeply.I came here with the mandate articulated at the Burari convention (of the Congress party) where we clearly spelt out our resolve to fight against corruption in the backdrop of Adarsh. Everything was collapsing, people were losing faith in political leadership, governance structure was failing including bureaucracy . I had to restore all that and I took a lot of decisions about the giving up of CM’s discretionary quote -- 2%-5% of flats. Created transparent pricing procedure and cleaned up things. Particularly real estate. Instead of focusing on who is guilty -- A or B or C -- I realized that rules were deliberately framed to benefit a few and it was those rules that needed to change. By changing the rules the exchequer gets value, price discovery through market mechanism so that it’s not completely discretionary as it is in Slum Rehabilitation Authority kind of scheme.I was in no hurry to pass individual proposals which were based on faulty policies. I’ll name just two here: parking policy and fungible FSI. We said if you have land and are developing it, give us public parking we’ll give you incentive FSI. It appeared very good on paper but because the policy was not well framed we didn’t define how much public parking should be allowed and as a result we got buildings where there were 26 storeys of public parking. I corrected that and said no more than eight storeys of parking-ground floor plus four and three stories of basement parking. People threw tantrums, went to court, lost. Then the issue of fungible FSI where everyone will get 35 pc extra FSI but you have to pay for it. Rs 3,000 crore was added to the Mumbai corporation from that decision.And sometimes that patronage exceeds limits, as happened in Adarsh. The defence that the officers recommended a particular thing and the CM blindly signed perhaps may not be a good enough justification. I began to question why everything must come to the CM. Why do transfers (excluding the senior ones) have to come? But I found that no minister wanted to cede authority particularly in matters of transfer: be it home department or revenue… There were other systemic problems. There was resistance particularly from the developers lobby which felt their privileges were being curtailed. In many cases developers were linked up in partnership with various people. We know the real estate scene in Mumbai. They spread the canard that the CM is slow, made out that thousands of files are lying in CM’s office. You can access through Right To Information how many files I cleared. But yes, certain issues took time. Cluster redevelopment is a complex issue, it took time.There are two peculiar problems with Mumbai and the state. We have no land in Mumbai and then there are self-imposed restrictions like the Coastal Regulation Zone. Other cities have reclaimed the sea and expanded. I’d requested some change to build a coastal road. After all Marine Drive is a coastal road.. Why can’t you do that again? Build a ring road around the city? Dubai has done that. Why can’t we do so without hurting the environment drastically.Then comes the larger problem of the state. Fifty seven per cent of the population depends on agriculture but only 18 per cent of agricultural land in Maharashtra is under irrigation. How does 18 pc sound when we look at 98 per cent for Punjab, 90 for Haryana, 70 per cent for UP-Bihar-it’s the Gangetic plain. We are the lowest in the country except for Kerala which is 16 per cent. If rains fail, the (ensuing) distress pulls down the state’s economy. Economy is important because though agri is only 10pc of the economy 57 per cent of the population depends on it. Droughts create hardship, anger and migration to Mumbai. This is the curse of the state we have not managed our water resources properly, and which is why the irrigation scam came up.One of the reports by the finance department led by the deputy CM himself said from the 70,000 crore spent in ten years there has been an increase in irrigated area of only 0.1 pc. So I said, ‘We must clarify and let’s bring out a White Paper’. This was taken amiss by the NCP. The connotation of the word White Paper is different in Maharashtra, which I did not know. White Paper is an information document by the state, it’s not a charge sheet. But here in Maharashtra the only time the word White Paper was used was in 1999 when our government alleged that Shiv Sena-BJP government had mismanaged the economy so badly that you need a White Paper. The NCP thought I was trying to fix them, which is not true. Obviously there was also something wrong with the policy and we needed to correct it.We don’t know how much collusion… For example, our budget was 8,000 crore but there were 80,000 crore worth of unfinished projects. How are there so many unfinished projects? How do you complete them. Every MLA wanted an irrigation project in his or her area. Was there contractors’ pressure? Perhaps yes. That only judicial process will determine. Perhaps everyone was spreading the butter too thin… Classic example was the Gosikhurd project in Nagpur inaugurated by Rajiv Gandhi in 1986 which was to cost 386 crore. It’s still incomplete and the cost has gone up to 13,600 crore. Was it a scam? Starting a project without land acquisition, without rehabilitation? The dam was built but we cannot store water. Why? Because certain villages will not relocate. Since 1986 why did we not make it a priority to rehabilitate these people? In another project, land required to build the dam wall was acquired but the reservoir land was not acquired. I set policy right saying not a penny would be spent unless you completely acquire land, deforest forest area without which you cannot store water, and rehabilitate everyone. But people only focused on why did Mr Ajit Pawar leave, why did I give him a clean chit? I never gave him a clean chit. I didn’t ask him to resign. He resigned of his own volition and then he realised that being out of power has lots of dimensions to it (laughs) and he came back and gave himself a clean chit. We have set up the Chitale committee and something will happen. In a coalition government can I realistically start prosecuting him? But people just expected that I should hang him.I can’t wish that away. Although the division of portfolio is such that that there’s very little one party can do to the portfolios of the other; there is little cohesiveness. When Mr Ajit Pawar was not the deputy CM, the other deputy CMs worked more cohesively. But Mr Ajit Pawar with his ambitions to become the chief minister and his proximity to Sharad Pawar meant that I had to face a qualitatively different relationship.When I became CM Mr Ajit Pawar became the deputy CM and he was more equal than the others in the political hierarchy of the NCP as he is the nephew. Chaggan Bhujbal, Vijay Mohite Patil, RR Patil were just senior leaders and so there was a qualitative difference.It’s too early to talk of that, though I have some indications that the NCP might back the BJP. It is anyway characteristic of smaller parties that they align with the ruling party in the centre. Take Omar Abdullah’s party or any other. I won’t be surprised if they (the NCP) angle for a role in the centre too. What else explains the way they pulled down our government? Our differences were not so irreconcilable.