Lavasa trail reinforces the Sharad Pawar connection & IPL link

A deeper look into the history of  the Lavasa Lake City project in Pune district reveals a far stronger connection between India’s biggest and most controversial township project, Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar and City Corporation’s managing director, Aniruddha Pradyumna Deshpande.

Documentary evidence shows that the Lavasa project  began not with Hindustan Construction Company (HCC),  but with the Pearly Blue Lake Resorts Pvt Ltd, led by Deshpande. This is the township development company in which the Pawar family’s holding of 16% stakes came to light in May-June 2010 in the Pune-IPL (Indian Premier League) bidding controversy.

Construction work continues to be at a standstill at the project site with the Bombay high court having declined last week to interfere with the “stop work”  directive issued by the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) to Lavasa Corporation, pending hearing of its show-cause notice.

The HC has asked MoEF to take a final decision by January 10. It also directed that before taking the decision, an environment impact assessment committee must visit the site “at least for three days” for inspection. MoEF had served the notice to Lavasa on November 25 asking why it did not obtain environmental clearances, as per notifications issued under Environment Protection Act, before the hill city project started in 2004.

In a nearly three-hour-long interview to DNA at his residence in Baramati on November 1, Pawar had revealed for the first time that it was he who had identified the site for the Lavasa project. He claimed that Lavasa was born after he introduced the site to HCC chairman and managing director, Ajit Gulabchand, who wanted to create independent India’s first hill station, about 60km from Pune in the backwaters of the Warasgaon dam.

The NCP president had told DNA that his objective to promote tourism in Maharashtra, including dam sites with natural beauty, complemented Gulabchand’s vision and that is how the  Lavasa Lake City project was born.

Documentary evidence with DNA, however, tells a different story. Lavasa Corporation’s draft red herring prospectus filed in preparation for its initial public offer (IPO) acknowledges the company’s origins with Pearly Blue Lake Resorts without going into the details.

Incorporated in February, 2000 by Deshpande with a nominal capital of Rs2 crore he, along with Pune-based businessmen Vitthal Maniyar and developer-builder Aniruddha Seolekar were the first directors of the company. Of the two, Maniyar’s biggest claim to fame is his extraordinary proximity to Sharad Pawar.

On December 12, 2000, the company’s name was changed to The Lake City Corporation Pvt Ltd with Deshpande’s explanatory statement filed with the Registrar of Companies stating that the company is doing the hotel business as the main object and wishes to change its name as it plans to “undertake new business activity of development of land on a large scale…”

The new “object clause” of the company to justify change of name under Section 17 of the Companies Act, 1956, states: “To establish, develop, build, construct, organise, run places of camps, farmhouses, quiet houses, inns, hotels, motels, cottages, convention centres, vacation homes, residential houses, dams, bridges, roads and other infrastructure.”

Converted into a public limited company on March 3, 2003, with the  name changed to The Lake City Corporation Ltd, it is in this year that HCC took up leadership position in the company with 15 lakh shares. The other shareholders (as of December 9, 2003) were listed as Aniruddha Deshpande (7.51 lakh shares), Vinay Vitthal Maniyar and wife Ruchira (7.50 lakh shares),  Hindustan Finwest, Janpath Investment and Holdings Ltd, and Venkateshwara Hatcheries, each with 7.50 lakh shares, Sadanand Sule (7.48 lakh shares) and Vitthal Maniyar (100 shares).

The Pawar connection with this project is visible on at least three fronts. The fact that the Lavasa project originated with Sharad Pawar and Aniruddha Deshpande in whose City Corporation Ltd the Pawar family’s stakes provoked the Pune-IPL bidding controversy.

On another front are the 12.48 lakh equity shares and 26.64 lakh 6% redeemable preference shares allotted to Pawar’s son-in-law, Sadanand Sule, by The Lake City Corporation on October 3, 2002 and the 7.49 lakh equity shares  and the 29.97 lakh 6% redeemable preference shares held jointly by Sadanand and Supriya Sule in The Lake City Corporation Ltd in 2004.

In September 2002, the Lake City Corporation entered into a crucial 30-year lease agreement with the Maharashtra Krishna Valley Development Corporation (MKVDC) which was headed by Pawar’s nephew, Ajit Pawar. The water rights given to the company under this agreement is now a matter of litigation.

Significantly, it was between 2001-04 that the company benefited from the most important notifications, agreements and clearances from the Maharashtra government.

These included the state government’s notification declaring the 18 villages of Mose valley as a hill station and the urban development department’s in-principle sanction for the development of these villages as tourist resorts and holiday homes.

This was besides agreements with the MKVDC for construction of mini-dams in the Warasgaon backwaters, agreement with the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation and the state environment department’s clearance to develop a hill station.