Amid rising demands for Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh’s resignation, All India Congress Committee (AICC) Maharashtra in-charge HK Patil on Monday, 22 March, said that Balasaheb Thorat and Ashok Chavan will meet the chief minister to discuss the accusatory letter of former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh.
Patil added that the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief had already spoken to the media and had said, “We'll discuss the resignation as well. Whatever alternatives come, we’ll see, even resignation is one alternative.”
Further, NCP clarified that the core members of Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) will discuss the issue, but the final decision will be taken by the CM of Maharashtra.
Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi on Sunday had said that it would be unfair on the part of the Congress to comment on the corruption charges made against Deshmukh by former Singh, since the NCP and the chief minister are looking into it.
NCP chief Sharad Pawar had called Singh’s allegations in the letter as serious, but added that the letter wasn’t signed and the timing is questionable.
Singhvi asserted that the MVA government is one and Sharad Pawar had spoken regarding the charges against Deshmukh.
Singhvi also raised the issue of corruption charges against Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa and why there was silence on the matter.
The Story So Far
On Saturday, 20 March, former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh, in an unsigned letter, accused Maharashtra Home Minister Deshmukh of corruption.
In his letter to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari, Singh claimed that Deshmukh had directed Sachin Vaze to collect Rs 100 crore every month from bars, restaurants, and other establishments.
Deshmukh, on the other hand, refuted the allegations and said that Singh was making false allegations to protect himself from further legal action, in connection with the Ambani bomb scare case.
After Singh’s letter levied corruption charges against Anil Deshmukh, Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had asserted that Uddhav Thackeray had lost the moral authority to rule the state.
Singhvi, however, raised the issue of corruption charges in the land denotification case against the Karnataka CM. He questioned the “hypocrisy” of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, when even after three judgments from the high court, there has been no comment by Home Minister Amit Shah or Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
While addressing the BJP’s accusations of hypocrisy, Singhvi said that the NCP chief will be giving more details later and that the Maharashtra chief minister was already looking into it. He fired back at the BJP by asking, “Which of these has happened with Mr Modi in regard to Mr Yediyurappa? Has he become a 'mauni baba' (silent saint) on this issue?”
Trading barbs, Singhvi alleged that it was Yediyurappa who had lost the moral authority to rule, as he had the nerves to go to the Supreme Court to get an interim order to save himself from arrest, despite three HC orders for trying him under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
The Congress spokesperson further demanded Yediyurappa’s immediate resignation.
“Is this the moral plane on which the chief minister can sit on his seat? Is this the morality of the prime minister who never asks him to leave? Is this the principal stand of the home minister who does not remove him? Is this the Nelsonian blind eye of the party to which he belongs which will not touch him? Is this the naked, shameless lust for power that makes people stick on and parties ignore everything? This is the worst form of breeding down of corruption. It clearly exposes the unethical, unscrupulous and untrustworthy nature of the BJP,” Singhvi concluded.
(With inputs from PTI)
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)