NEW DELHI: Home Minister Amit Shah, who on Sunday presented a detailed analysis of the Phase-I polling in West Bengal and Assam to claim a definite victory for his party in the two states, refused to divulge anything regarding a purported meeting with NCP supremo Sharad Pawar amid the ongoing political crisis in the Maha Vikas Agadhi government in Maharashtra.
“Everything need not be made public,” Shah said responding to a query about the “meeting”. According to reports, “two NCP leaders” visited Ahmedabad for a hush-hush meeting with “some businessman” at a venue where Shah also reached. The buzz is that Pawar and Praful Patel were the two NCP leaders who met Shah “at a farmhouse in Ahmedabad on Saturday”.
Interestingly, while Shah declined to confirm he also did not deny the purported meeting. At a time when Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA government is struggling to survive, the meeting opens up space for a whole lot of speculations, possibilities, permutations and combinations especially with Shiv Sena now openly gunning for Home Minister Anil Deshmukh.
Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut today pointed “loopholes” in the state governance, stating that the MVA government does not have any adequate mechanism for “damage control”.
Criticising Deshmukh, Raut also claimed that he got the post of Home Minister after other senior NCP leaders such as Dilip Walse Patil and Jayat Patil refused to take the offer. “That is why Sharad Pawar selected Anil Deshmukh for the post,” Raut wrote in Sena mouthpiece ‘Samana’.
Raut said no one came forward from the government side to respond to the allegations made by former commissioner of Mumbai Police Param Bir Singh who in his letter to the CM accused Deshmukh of asking API Sachin Waze to collect Rs 100 crore every month. “If a junior officer like Sachin Vaze was running a (money) collection racket from the Mumbai police commissioner’s office, why was the Home Minister not aware of it,” Raut questioned.
Sanjay Raut’s attack and Shah’s reported meeting with Pawar has raised questions on the future of the Maharashtra government. The controversy has left the ruling coalition red-faced.
Meanwhile, the Congress (one of the three angles of the Aghadi) in also in a piquant situation, fearing “collateral damage” as allegations are mostly against Sena and NCP. Ousted following revelations involving the security scare outside billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s home in Mumbai, Singh accused the Congress leader of drafting cops to run an extortion racket worth Rs 100 crore a month as well as interfering in investigations.