The Hindu : Ganglords and policemen jump into the fray

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Monday, Mar 15, 2004

National

National - Elections 2004

Ganglords and policemen jump into the fray

Mafia dons and former police officers promise to spice up the electoral race in Mumbai. Kalpana Sharma explores why they have chosen to throw their hats into the ring.

Can law-breakers and law-enforcers also become law-makers? In Mumbai, the "cops and robbers" who fought each other on the streets now hope to engage in a different kind of battle. Four former police officers and at least two members of established underworld gangs have thrown their hats into the political ring in Mumbai. Whether any of them will eventually win, or even get a ticket from any of the established parties, remains a question mark. But the very fact that they want to enter politics is a notable development.

Amongst them is Y. C. Pawar, the man who brought down the famous Varadaraja Mudaliar, Mumbai's illegal liquor don of the 1960s. A former joint commissioner of police, the 60-year-old Mr. Pawar is hoping that he will be approached by the Congress to be their candidate for Mumbai North Central, the seat held by the Lok Sabha Speaker, Manohar Joshi of the Shiv Sena. Mr. Pawar says he would rather stand for the Lok Sabha than the State Assembly because State politics is very caste-oriented. "I'm from the Scheduled Castes. In my village, untouchability is still observed even though it has reduced. But there is enough there to make you realise that you are an untouchable," he says. Controlling corruption will be the main concern of this former police officer who has a reputation of being incorruptible and tough on the underworld.

Mr. Pawar has a much younger rival for the same seat in 42-year-old Sanjay Pandey whose claim to fame is his handling of the communal riots in Mumbai riots in 1992-93. As the DCP in charge of some of the most sensitive areas, including the sprawling slums of Dharavi, Mr. Pandey distinguished himself by being both tough and fair during the riots. Residents of Dharavi hold him in high esteem to this day. Subsenquently, Mr. Pandey was posted as DCP, Economic Offences, where he ran afoul of several powerful politicians with his exposure of the `shoe scandal' wherein easy loans were given to businesses masquerading as cobblers' societies. Predictably, he was transferred out.

An IIT-trained computer engineer, Mr. Pandey says that after 13 years in the police, including a spell in Delhi as part of the Special Protection Group assigned to the Prime Minister, he is ready to face the challenge of politics. "This old boys' club has to be stopped," he says. "But just as you have to take the UPSC examination to join the IAS, you have to join an established political party to enter politics." Like Mr. Pawar, Mr. Pandey too wants to fight elections on the plank of corruption and hopes the Congress will offer him the Mumbai North-Central seat.

The heart of Mumbai's gangland lies in the South-Central seat. And here one might see a direct confrontation between the police and the mafia.

Challenging the sitting Shiv Sena MP, Mohan Rawle, are 51-year-old Arun Gawli, promoted at one time as the `Hindu don' to counter Dawood Ibrahim, and T. K. Chowdhury, until the beginning of this year Additional Director-General of Police in Maharashtra, and now with the Samajwadi Party. The South-Central seat saw a close contest between the Shiv Sena and the SP in the 1998 election when the latter had fielded an educationist, Suhail Lokhandwala. However, it lost badly in 1999 when lawyer Majeed Memon was fielded against Mr. Rawle.

This time round, it is Mr. Gawli who could eat into the Shiv Sena's vote bank in this largely working class locality. A huge iron gate marks the entrance to Mr. Gawli's Dagdi chawl, now redeveloped into a three-storey building with a temple in the compound.

Two policemen sit outside, noting down the identity of any stranger who enters. Security guards of his party, the Akhil Bharatiya Sena, with ABS emblazoned on their lapels, subject you to another check before you can enter the building. Here the dominant image is of a backlit portrait of the don sporting a Gandhi cap. The only other images in the room are several gods, mostly of Shirdi Sai Baba.

Mr. Gawli does not step outside Dagdi chawl for fear that he will either be arrested or be killed by a rival gang. Inside his fortress, he runs a free medical clinic and `serves' the people of the area by fixing problems like water supply and toilets, or arranging jobs for the growing number of jobless in an area with dozens of closed textile mills.

Meanwhile the police stand by and watch. "How come ex-police officers are willing to stand from such an area," we ask the constable posted outside Dagdi chawl. "If film stars can stand, then why not police and criminals?" he counters.

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