Pawar's daughter to file nomination for RS

Barely a month after joining active politics, Supriya Sule, the only child of Nationalist Congress Party supremo Sharad Pawar, has been made the party's Rajya Sabha nominee for the September 18 bye-election from Maharashtra.

Sule, 38, will file her nomination on Tuesday, party general secretary D P Tripathi told PTI, amid expectations that she would have a smooth sailing.

He said the decision was taken by Pawar after talking to senior leaders, including Union Minister Praful Patel, who had a meeting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi in this regard.

The meeting suggested that the Congress would back the nomination of Sule for the bye-election scheduled on September 18. The bypoll was necessitated by the death of NCP leader Vasant Chavan.

Sule, who joined politics on July 17 by enrolling herself as an active member of the party founded by her father, has been involved in development work for backward classes and women's self-help groups.

Earlier this year, she had criticised the Congress-NCP led state government for neglecting fund allocation for 'ashramshalas' (residential schools in under-developed areas).

The last Rajya Sabha bypoll from the state, held a couple of months ago, had witnessed a lot of bad blood between NCP and Congress with Pawar's party supporting industrialist Rahul Bajaj contesting as an Independent against Congress nominee Avinash Pandey.

Sule is being brought to national politics at a time when her cousin Ajit Pawar is a senior cabinet minister in Maharashtra. She has always been insisting that he was not a rival.

In Mumbai, NCP leader and Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said that Pawar would be 'informed of the NCP workers' desire to nominate Supriya for the Rajya Sabha bypoll'.

Supriya's candidature was discussed at a meeting of the party's parliamentary board in Delhi on Monday, he told reporters after the meeting.

The board unanimously endorsed Supriya's candidature, Patel said. "Pawar has not interfered in the selection process for the Rajya Sabha candidate," Patel, flanked by state NCP president Arun Gujrathi, deputy chief minister R R Patil and public works minister Chhagan Bhujbal, said.

"We will inform Pawar that an overwhelming number of NCP workers favour Supriya contesting the Rajya Sabha bypoll," Patel said.

Asked about the stance of NCP's ruling partner Congress over the bypoll, Patel expressed confidence that 'they would abide by the coalition dharma'.

When pointed out that Congress was unhappy with NCP backing industrialist Rahul Bajaj against official Congress nominee Avinash Pande in the recent Rajya Sabha poll, Patel said 'you better ask this to Congress leaders'.