Sharad Pawar is considered an authority when it comes to understanding the cooperation sector that has contributed largely to the growth of the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leaders, and the areas under their command in Maharashtra. With growth came irregularities and corruption which has been probed at different levels. Some inquiries are being pursued by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime at the Centre. The Devendra Fadnavis government also tried to infiltrate into the sector which now is being overhauled by the NCP in particular, to be again the engine of its political economy of sugar mills (cooperative and private), banks, dairies, spinning mills etc. No wonder, then, that the carving out of the new ‘Cooperation Ministry’ in the union government and giving of its reins to Home Minister Amit Shah, made people think that the BJP’s prime motive is to establish total control of the cooperation sector in Maharashtra.

Pawar has broken his silence over the subject of grave concern. Pawar has allayed the fears of the demolition at the hands of BJP, giving some relief to the worried ‘sahakar samrat’ (cooperation kings). But his statement, if taken as a challenge by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, is likely to trigger yet another Centre versus state battle, whenever the Centre decides to implement reforms through new legislation in this matter. “The Centre does not have any constitutional right to interfere in the state’s cooperation laws because it is the state subject. Talks of the sector in Maharashtra being dominated by the Centre are meaningless,” Pawar said in Baramati on Sunday. Until last week, the cooperation department was part of the union agriculture ministry. At this juncture, the opinion of Pawar, the former union agriculture minister, who has dealt with the cooperation sector for about five decades, matters most. “I was agriculture minister for 10 years. The cooperation department existed then. It’s not something new,” he added.