The Curious Case of Anjali Damania

Last week an interview with Anjali Damania appeared in FirstPost wherein she declared that BJP was their (AAP) main rival & Congress was finished.

Both these statements were quite revealing. What is that makes her conclude that the Congress is finished? Finished in the State of Maharashtra or pan India? Does she include NCP also in this finished list?  Isn’t it the same Congress which is supporting the Government of AAP to which she currently belongs to? How is a finished Party supporting AAP? Or is it just a veil to cover her/ her party’s real agenda to shadow box BJP on behalf of Congress?

If one recalls, two years back Ms. Damania shot to fame over her exposes of the scam in irrigation dam projects in Maharashtra, the target seemed to be Corruption of the Congress – NCP Government & more specifically Mr. Ajit Pawar, nephew of Mr. Sharad Pawar.

During this time, Ms. Damania, being a member of IAC, was at pains to explain her father’s connection with RSS & how she was imbibed with RSS’s anti-corruption philosophy, trying to hint where her leanings where.

In the mean time two things came to light.

  Ms. Damania was not fighting any public cause but was trying save her 30-acre farm in the Kondivade village, purchased as an ‘agriculturist’ When the Kondhane dam project was announced, Ms. Damania got panicky about her investment. After a lot of water flowed in the river,  The Govt. of Maharashtra took back the land after it was exposed by the tehsildar of Karjat that the land was bought fraudulently. As it turned out she was not an agriculturist by any stretch of imagination. That she was a pathologist turned developer & the land was converted from Agriculture land to Non agriculture (NA) land and was sold to SVV Developers, of which Damania is a director!! The land was to be used for building private villas in the name of Alpine Village.

 That this could not be done without the principles of non corrupt ways being thrown out of the window doesn't need great insight.

2. The real expose of the scam came from the then Chief Engineer of the Water Resources Department and a member of the state level technical advisory committee, Mr. Vijay Pandhare and he supplied the documents on the larger scam taking place all over Maharashtra. Whereas Damania’s sole focus was the Kondhane dam & her protecting her business interests.   

Slowly the focus turned to how she approached Mr. Nitin Gadkari to take up the matter further & how he refused to take it up sighting his business relations with Mr. Sharad Pawar, the friendly media eagerly went into over drive coming out with the Purti holdings & its investments and how Gadkari’s driver and servants were directors etc… The connections between the irrigation scam,  Purti holdings & Gadkari though never got established!!  

The real issue of the Irrigation scam became more of a foot note than anything else in this whole drama. That today it is a matter almost forgotten is another story!

Curiously it is  Kirit Somaiya of the BJP who is persuing  the matter!!

One is not aware as to what happened to all the proof of corruption in the irrigation scam & what follow up action was taken by Ms. Damania & AAP. However Mr. Gadkari slapped defamation notice on Ms.  Damania.

Unfortunately all the good things that her father taught were never put to use by Damania during wheeling dealing.

The end result of all this Nitin Gadkari bashing, out of nowhere as it seemed then, ultimately led to Gadkari making way to Rajnath Singh as Party President. As it looks now the whole idea of the revelations of the irrigation scam was a big cloak used to get at the Nagpur strong man and thru him BJP into trouble along with Mr. Pawar & his NCP, which would keep both BJP & NCP in check & give more space to Congress in Maharashtra for its maneuverings.  One should not forget the parallel exposes that were taking place on the Adarsh society scam, putting a lot of Congress leaders in trouble at that time, including the then CM Ashok Chavan & the current Central Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde. This was one good attention diverter!!

As the Lok Sabha Election get nearer and nearer the true colours of AAP ka intentions become clearer and clearer. If Swami Agnivesh was the plan A of Congress, AAP is the plan B. One has to see if a plan C is also in place, looking at the way plan B is now getting exposed by the hour.