Sharad Pawar comes a long way, Y B Chavan style

Pawar has been re-elected as the floor leader of Congress party in the Lower House by Congress Parliamentary Party chairman Sonia Gandhi who is not the member of either House of Parliament, but by virtue of being leader of the largest opposition party, he will automatically be nominated as Leader of Opposition, which carries with it the status of a Cabinet minister.

An official release said that Pawar would get the status of Leader of Opposition in terms of Section 2 of the salary and allowances of Leaders of Opposition in the Parliament Act, 1977.

Twenty-one years ago, when Congress suffered its first everdefeat in general elections and lost power to Janata Party, Pawar’s mentor late Yeshwantrao Chavan occupied the same position and took on the then prime minister Moraraji Desai.

There have been very few occasions, and most of them are recent ones, when Lok Sabha had a Leader of Opposition.There was no Leader of Opposition during Nehru’s, Shastri’s and Indira’s time as no single opposition party could muster enough number of seats to claim the post.. While Pawar’s supporters hail his becoming Leader of Opposition, his detractors feel that he has been effectively sidelined by Sonia.

The issue even figured recently in Assembly, where Munde taunted Congress members that despite their party winning maximum seats in the State, their leader had no standing in “Delhi Darbar” of Congress.