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SUPRIYA SULE, MP, NATIONALIST CONGRESS PARTY
Hard talk
Her work on women’s empowerment and
tribal rights has been overshadowed by
Indian Premier League controversies
SANJAY JOG
or all the world, 41-year
F old Supriya Sadanand
Sule is the auntie next
door. She writes on her blog
that she’d like to see every child
in India getting quality edu-
cation and then signs off hasti-
ly: “gotta go, helping the kids
with their homework”.
Normally, women who have
homes on Peddar Road and as-
sets amounting to over Rs 50
crore (according to the income
declaration she filed when she
became an MP) hire others to
teach their children. But Sule
wears her declared wealth light-
ly. She dresses simply, wears
next to no jewellery and comes
across as a sensible, upper mid-
dle class, educated woman, con-
scious of her rights but anxious
to dispel the image of politi-
cians as all bad and corrupt.
If you consider her back-
ground, this is not surprising.
She’s led a relatively sheltered
political life, leapfrogging the
heat and dust of municipal and
state politics to become a Ra-
jya Sabha MP in 2006. Pawar’s
decision to nominate Sule, who
is a trustee of the prestigious
Nehru Centre in Mumbai, raised
eyebrows then, for that’s when
the world took note of the fact
that she, and not the politi-
cally aggressive Ajit Pawar,
Pawar’s nephew, would be
Pawar’s heir apparent.
Parenthetically, since her
nomination to the Rajya Sab-
ha, Sule has been quite active
in Pune, cousin Ajit’s sphere of
influence, emphasising devel-
opment and water issues.
Her entry into politics was
gradual and measured. She mar-
ried Sadanand Sule, the son
of B R Sule, former Mahindra
and Mahindra managing di-
rector. Sule’s husband was an
IT consultant to multinationals,
and after they married they
moved to California where she
studied water pollution at UC
Berkley. After subsequent post-
A close associate from one of India’s leading
business houses says Sule wears both the
‘Bharat’ and ‘India’ hats with felicity
ings in Indonesia and Singapore
she came home to Mumbai
Initially, Sule kept herself
busy in rural service, managing
schools for tribal children and
working on women’s empow-
erment issues. In fact, taking
tips from her father, Sule fo-
cused on the growth of self help
groups (SHGs) across the state.
She is the chairman of the
Yashaswini Women’s Group,
which has emerged as a suc-
cessful SHG in Maharashtra.
Simultaneously, she brought
together members of all politi-
cal parties to jointly tackle mal-
nutrition in tribal-dominated ar-
eas. She also lobbied for the state
government to improve facili-
ties for residential schools for
tribal students. The Maharash-
tra government immediately re-
PHOTO: SURYAKANT NIWATE
sponded positively.
Meanwhile, Sule forayed in-
to the competitive and money-
making education sector, open-
ing the state-of-the-art Pawar
Public School in Mumbai’s sub-
urb Bhandup.
Despite the pursuit of her
social agenda, Sule did not
abandon friends from the cor-
porate world. A close associate
from one of India’s leading busi-
ness houses says Sule wears
both the “Bharat” and “India”
hats with felicity.
In the 2009 general election,
Supriya was named the Na-
tionalist Congress Party (NCP)
candidate for Pawar’s bastion
Baramati. Pawar himself moved,
rather reluctantly, to the Mha-
da Lok Sabha seat in Sholapur
district. Sule cashed in on her
father’s work in Baramati —
took the trouble to tour the con-
stituency intensively.
Everything was going just
fine until the Indian Premier
League (IPL) controversy blew
up. Sule had to come to the de-
fence of her husband following
media reports that he held a 10
per cent stake, through a pow-
er of attorney from his father,
in IPL telecasting agency Mul-
ti Screen Media (formerly Sony
Entertainment Television).
She said her husband had in-
herited the stake from his father.
“His father was chairman of Sony
for years, from 1992. The whole
world knows it. It is not a hid-
den secret. He is 84 years old
and has been unwell for a long
time and that is why he [her hus-
band] got it but only as a proxy.
Nothing else,” she said.
There were also claims that
Sadanand Sule had a role in se-
curing the IPL television rights
via an $80 million “facilitation
fee” allegedly given to sports
management company World
Sports Group (WSG). His wife
insists he had nothing to do with
this or any other IPL-related con-
troversy. Sule said “Nothing, no,
nothing. I cross my heart and
say this. My husband has noth-
ing to do with the teams in IPL.
Yes, my family loves cricket like
all Indians, and as all of you
do, we enjoy the game; that is
where the buck stops.”
It turns out that she may
have been protesting too much.
Claims that neither she nor her
family had any financial deal-
ings with the IPL were dis-
proved when a leading English
daily revealed that she and her
father owned a minority 16.22
per cent in a realtor called City
Corp, which bid for the Pune
IPL cricket team.
Once that was revealed,
Sule said she had nothing to
do with the decision, it was City
Corp’s board of directors that
had allowed its Managing Di-
rector Aniruddha Deshpande
to bid for the team in his in-
dividual capacity. This in itself
is strange. It is unclear why
is a board resolution required
for an individual to bid for IPL
— unless the bidder was using
the company’s balance sheet
to strengthen his case. Either
way, it is clear that Sule’s em-
phatic disclaimers cannot be
taken at face value.
In one of her speeches, she
had said, “People have lost faith
in politicians and the system,
but not hope.” Since last week,
that seems to be one of the few
credible statements she’s made.