Two days after the senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader – Ajit Pawar surreptitiously shook hands with BJP to form the government in Maharashtra, the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) on November 25 dropped nine cases related to the multi-crore irrigation scam against the newly sworn-in Deputy Chief minister- Pawar.
The Anti Corruption Bureau gave Pawar a clean chit in the Rs 70,000 crore irrigation scam and denied that the closure of these case had any relation with the ongoing political development.
All these scams were reported when NCP and Congress were ruling the state of Maharashtra. Ajit Pawar was among the ministers who were in charge of the irrigation department at different times between 1999 and 2014.
Parambir Singh, the director-general of ACB, briefing the media said that the Ajit Pawar’s name has not come up in the nine closed cases. He further said that there were no irregularities found in these nine inquiries.
The DGP’s comments are in stark contrast to the then ACB- DGP Sanjay Barve who in an affidavit in November 2018, mentioned that Pawar did intervene in the awarding of irrigation projects contract, to provide mobilisation advance (MA) to the contractors by changing rules and approving irregular escalations of project costs.
However, the ACB officials clarified that Monday’s development will not impact the over two dozen FIRs registered in the alleged multi-thousand crore irrigation scam.
The opposition Congress claimed that Ajit Panwar was “exonerated” for his support to the BJP in forming the government.
“Contract killing’ of democracy has now also become ‘contract killing’ of honesty and accountability in Maharashtra. No wonder, the only decision taken in ‘public interest’ by BJP-Ajit Pawar is to close all cases of corruption & malfeasance. The BJP way of probity in public life,” Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said in a tweet.
It was Devendra Fadnavis, the newly found “close aide” of Ajit Pawar who after becoming the Chief Minister in 2014, ordered an ACB inquiry into the irrigation scam involving Ajit Pawar and other top NCP leaders.
