The Lavasa project is a vision shared with Sharad Pawar: Aniruddha Deshpande

In an exclusive interview to DNA on Saturday, City Corporation Ltd’s managing director, Aniruddha Deshpande, said the Lavasa project was born out of a common vision shared by him and Nationalist Congress Party president, Sharad Pawar.

Detailing the origins of the project the 50-year-old motor-racing enthusiast said it was in 1999 that he had first discussed the Maharashtra government’s Lake District Project with Pawar and made known his interest in the proposal to replicate England’s Lakes District.

“We felt that just as lake sites in England’s Lake District had been linked with roads, a tourism zone could be created by developing various dam sites, from Lonavla to Radhanagari  in Kolhapur district,” Deshpande said.”It was Pawar who suggested to me that I explore the Warasgaon-Panshet belt for a possible project,”  he recalled.

After multiple visits to the Warasgaon dam site, Desphande decided to take the project forward and established the Pearly Blue Lake Resorts Pvt Ltd, with Pune businessmen Aniruddha Seolekar and Vitthal Maniyar.

Deshpande said that since the company  was looking for investors,  they approached Sadanand Sule (Sharad Pawar’s son-in-law), among others. “We did not realise the implications of Sule’s investments and the controversies that would follow,” he added.

According to him, on realising that the project was beyond their capacity, large infrastructure firms were approached and Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) entered the project nearly two years after the lake city project had been initiated by him.