When Maharashtra’s Home Minister R R Patil first mooted the transfer of Bombay’s police commissioner Arup Patnaik a day after some Muslim groups ran riot at the Azad Maidan on August 11, 2012, I am told, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan told him, “If Patnaik goes, so do you”. Read more

Now that Team Anna is contemplating forming a political party, I wonder why Anna Hazare had to go as far as New Delhi to look for a clean government. Read more

When Sharad Pawar split the Congress in 1999, he had hoped that the whole of the party will rally behind him and that Sonia Gandhi will be just left with herself and a handful of her close supporters. Read more

Years ago, Yusuf Muchala, even then a noted lawyer practising at the Bombay High Court, had told me something that has stuck in my mind forever. Read more

Someone asked me the other day: do you think any action will be initiated against the ministers named in the land scam in Maharashtra by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG)? Read more

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Socialist. Read more

Speaking to a man in the know, the other week, I was rather amused to hear him describe the situation in the Nationalist Congress Party rather succinctly. Read more

In recent years, Chhagan Bhujbal has been Maharahstra’s toughest Home Minister, even willing to take on Bal Thackeray and throw the Sena supremo into the slammer. Read more

I have never quite heard of something like this – the Deputy Chief Minister of a state not on talking terms with the Chief Minister because his lollipop was taken away, not by the CM but by a third party which was well within it’s rights to do so. Read more

I did not think this would happen in my part of the world but, after the rapist politicians of Uttar Pradesh, a home-grown one seems to have arisen in Maharashtra. Read more