Pune Congress washes hands off CWG-tainted Suresh Kalmadi

When Congress MP Suresh Kalmadi was re-elected to the Lok Sabha from the Pune constituency last summer, his supporters roared Sabase bada khiladi, Suresh Kalmadi.

On Friday, however, the Pune City Congress unit virtually abandoned their leader, showing neither sympathy nor support when the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raided his residence, Kalmadi House.

Although Kalmadi has been single-handedly dominating the city unit of Congress for more than a decade, none of the prominent members of the city Congress - activists or leaders- visited Kalmadi House to show their support.

The only party leaders who visited his house were executive committee member Kaka Dharmawat and Ramesh Aiyar besides his publicist Pravin Walimbe and personal assistant Raja Mahajan.

The only crowds gathered were media persons from various news channels and newspapers.

Located off Karve Road, Kalmadi House has been the hub of high level political planning and plotting for decades. The high profile Congress MP’s presence in the city would invariably be reflected with the sight at his house where leaders, political activists and others would be waiting for an appointment.

Immediately after the raids began at around 7.30 am, Kalmadi’s personal assistant Raja Mahajan came to the residence but preferred to stand some distance away from the house. Later, Walimbe turned up with two assistants.

The Congress is NCP’s ruling alliance partner in the PMC and holds posts of deputy mayor (Prasanna Jagtap), standing committee chairman (Arvind Shinde), chairman of city improvement committee (Virendra Kirad), chairperson of school education board (Sangeeta Tiwari) and leader of opposition (Aba Bagul).

But none of these senior office bearers including the party’s city unit president Abhay Chhajed visited Kalmadi House to express solidarity with their leader.

Likewise, none of the party’s 43 corporators came to support their leader. By late evening no one even issued any statement to express solidarity with Kalmadi.

When contacted, Chhajed said, “This is part of an investigation and we all are cooperating with it.” When asked why Congressmen were not coming out in support of their leader, he said this proved that the party was not interfering with investigation.

Defending Kalmadi, Walimbe said, “Kalmadi had successfully organised Commonwealth Games (CWG) but the decisions were taken by committees. Kalmadi had shown readiness for judicial inquiry also. Let there be a thorough inquiry. The truth will come out and the Kalmadi will come out clean.”