Eye on Maharashtra: Amruta Fadnavis upsets BJP supporters with her tweets

Speak in haste and repent at leisure is something that people who love to drink know only too well. But even a sober Amruta Fadnavis, wife of former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, is being trolled for losing her head at just the thought of wine.

Last week Maharashtra government allowed sale of fruit-based wine in walk-in stores and supermarkets while continuing to restrict sale of beer and other alcoholic drinks. This was the longstanding wish of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar, who had first mooted the idea in 2005 when he was agriculture minister in the UPA. There had been universal outrage at the time. Ashok Chavan, the then revenue minister in the Vilasrao Deshmukh government had objected on the ground that the state could not afford to lose more in excise revenue.

Chavan was referring to Pawar’s earlier policy of allowing village women the right to shut down liquor stores had already cost the state a pretty penny. Pawar had enacted the policy as chief minister in 1994 that empowered the Collector to hold a referendum of women if there was a demand to shut down bars and liquor stores in villages. If more than 50 percent of the women in any given village voted for the proposal, no further procedure was required to shut down these offending outlets. It is a policy unique to Maharashtra and far more successful than Bihar’s liquor ban.

However, what Pawar had not bargained for was the impact on sugar factories that relied on liquor manufacturers to make use of molasses generated as a by-product. Despite empowering the women, Congress lost the next election in 1995 but when it returned to power in 1999 along with the NCP, it decided to issue more licenses to factories which could make use of the molasses--this would have greatly benefitted the sugar barons many of whom were ministers in the government. However, it was a coalition government and the smaller parties in the alliance were not amused by the move and the proposal was then dropped.

When the Congress-NCP returned to power on their own in 2004, they allowed the sale of country liquor from all bars and restaurants (and vice versa) as well as stores stocking imported alcohol and IMFL–once again on the ground of increasing revenue. However, while these sales were pushed through, Pawar’s proposal to sell wine from supermarkets did not come to fruition, particularly as the previous year the Maharashtra government had raised the age limit for consuming alcohol from 18 years to 21 years and imposed a strict checking of licenses at bars and liquor stores. The move was seen as hypocritical and Pawar was forced to back off.

But with patience of an elephant, he has succeeded 15 years later. The government, however, has taken care not to allow supermarkets near schools or places of worship to sell such wine and justified the decision saying it would help farmers.

Nashik in Maharashtra is the Napa Valley of India and produces 80% of the wine consumed in the country. Grape production has been a very successful enterprise for farmers over the past years and Nashik’s grapes have a good export market having won prizes at London and Paris grape shows. Nashik’s wines can compete with the best across the world.

The decision, while welcomed by farmers, caused righteous indignation in BJP ranks and Fadnavis declared they would not allow Maharashtra to be turned into a ‘Madyarashtra’. Congress responded by pointing out that BJP government in Madhya Pradesh had last week allowed airports and supermarkets in four major cities to sell even hard liquor. They had also decided to issue home bar licenses to shops with a revenue of Rs. 1 crore or more.

NCP asked BJP’s own leaders to first shut down their own bars and alcohol factories before raising flak over wine sales in Maharashtra. The pointer was to Pankaja Munde, former minister in the Fadnavis cabinet, whose husband owns a beer factory. She had got into trouble as water resources minister by diverting water from the water-starved Marathwada region to her husband’s beer factory and then had to resign as a director in that factory. Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut simply pointed out that wine was not alcohol and to date no one had been known to get drunk on wine or die of wine consumption as they did with alcohol.

Amruta Fadnavis, however, jumped into the fray and responded with a series of unsavoury tweets against leaders of the three parties using words like ‘namard’ and ‘haramkhor’. She was heavily trolled when she asked people to fill up the blanks and name who was namard and who was haramkhor.

People did fill up the blanks but not in the manner she anticipated. They reiterated that wine was not liquor, that her husband was the namard and that Modi was the haramkhor. Amruta had earlier indicated her preference for Raut as namard and labelled NCP leader Nawab Malik as the ‘bigde’ (spoilt) Nawab and Congress leader Nana Patole as Nanhe Patole. All three are the bane of her husband’s existence.

Amruta Fadnavis was ever the recalcitrant First Lady of Maharashtra getting into situations other politicians’ wives would be wary of but her recent tweets shocked even BJP workers. They are upset at the unsavoury retorts she invited from the Maha Vikas Aghadi against their leaders– they are still smarting from last month’s episode with Patole, who had threatened to ‘beat up Modi’, fishing out a man nick-named ‘Modi’ in his village who had been deserted by his wife!

BJP workers, unable to respond in kind are hugely upset with Amruta Fadnavis giving another opportunity on a platter to the MVA to tease and taunt their leaders again. Fadnavis better restrain his wife, a bank employee, or get pushed out of the BJP, some of them are muttering.

(The writer is Consulting Editor, National Herald, Mumbai)

(This article was first published in National Herald on Sunday)