Murli Deora, the trusted loyalist of the Gandhis

MUMBAI: Not many politicians in Maharashtra can claim to be on best of terms with leaders from rival parties. In the dog-eats-dog world of politics that is often practised in the maximum city, rivalries often have a tendency to rage out of control and old scores are seldom forgotten as clans and communities vie for the biggest prize of all.

Control over Mumbai’s political and financial muscle. Murli Deora, who passed away on Monday at the age of 77, can justly claim to have achieved this prize this with the least ill-will.

In a career that spanned three decades, Deora ruled over the Congress’s apparatus in Mumbai with velvet gloves if not an iron fist. He was a prodigious fundraiser, tapping the myriad sources of capital in Mumbai among corporates, top brokers and industrialists, all of whom were beholden to the Congress party in one or the other in the 1980s.

The fact that the Congress was the undisputed national party governing the country with a brute majority in 1984 also helped, but in no way diminishes the power that Deora wielded. He won LS elections from Mumbai south in 1989 and retained it in 1991 in the immediate aftermath of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination.

Deora was close to both the son and the mother (Indira) and lost no time in cultivating a friendship with Sonia Gandhi.