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NCP’s Ajit Pawar was appointed Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister on Saturday.
Three days after Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar’s switch helped the BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis take power in Maharashtra, investigation has been closed into some cases linked to the irrigation scam in which he is an accused.
Sources in the Maharashtra Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) have been quoted by news agency ANI as saying that none of the nine cases closed are linked to Ajit Pawar, now deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra. The bureau says the move is routine.
“We are investigating around 3,000 tenders in irrigation-related complaints. These are routine inquiries which are closed and all ongoing investigations are continuing as they were earlier,” said senior officer Parambir Singh to news agency ANI.
“None of the cases that were closed today are related to Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister, Ajit Pawar,” he said.
However, the timing has set off a buzz in the middle of a controversy after the BJP turned the tables on the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress and Devendra Fadnavis was sworn in as Chief Minister in an early morning oath ceremony on Saturday, with Ajit Pawar as his deputy. Ajit Pawar claimed all 54 MLAs of the NCP were with him, which has since been contradicted by his uncle and party chief Sharad Pawar.
Mr Fadnavis and the BJP have always targeted Ajit Pawar over allegations of corruption. In 2014, one of the first actions that he took after becoming Chief Minister was to sanction an investigation into Ajit Pawar’s alleged role in the irrigation scam, involving allegations of a swindle of some Rs 70,000 crore.
Just before last month’s Maharashtra election, both Ajit Pawar and Sharad Pawar were charged by the Enforcement Directorate with money-laundering linked to a cooperative bank scam.
While campaigning for the election, Mr Fadnavis had said in a rally that Ajit Pawar would end up in jail after the polls and would be “chakki peesing and peesing and peesing (will do hard prison labour)”, referencing a dialogue from the 1980s blockbuster Sholay.
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