Nagpur: The Maharashtra government is in the process to withdraw around four lakhs cases, except offences of serious nature, registered statewide during the pandemic.
Stating this at Police Gymkhana on Saturday, state home minister Anil Deshmukh said, “Cases of serious nature like assaulting police personnel or doctors and such grave matters would not be considered.”
Deshmukh also said the state government and home department are in the process of seeking legal advice on the applicability of section 5 of the Official Secret Act, 1923, against Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami “for his WhatsApp chats with ex-CEO of Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) Partho Dasgupta”.
“The classified information related to national security is supposed to be with only a handful few like Prime Minister, defence minister, Army chief and such highly placed officials. But Goswami was having the information of Balakot strike three days prior to the actual event. He shared such information with BARC’s Dasgupta,” said Deshmukh.
“The central government and the ministry concerned should now account for it as to how such information pertaining to national security was known to Goswami in advance. I, as a home minister, appeal to the Centre to reveal how the classified information related to national security was shared in advance,” he said.
Deshmukh also sounded miffed with the Central government for intervening into state’s decision to scale down security of some senior leaders. He was replying to queries about the Centre’s decision to provide additional protection to senior leaders like former CM Narayan Rane and state BJP chief Chandrakant Patil with paramilitary troopers.
“The security was scaled down following the decision of the high-level committee constituted to assess the threat perception. Security is a state domain but the way Centre interfered was baffling,” he said.
Deshmukh, who also said the recruitment process for 12,500 posts of constabulary was underway, said he has had a positive dialogue with the Maratha leaders demanding job quota.