ED probe into Ajit Pawar by HC orders, BJP has no role: Fadnavis

Nagpur: Denying allegations that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) was acting against deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar at the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) behest, leader of opposition Devendra Fadnavis on Friday said the agency’s action was underway as per Bombay high court directives.
“On August 2019, the HC had clearly directed lodging of an FIR against all accused in connection with the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank (MSCB) scam, including Pawar. The ED is acting as per the HC directives pertaining to financial embezzlement. There’s no political motive or interest of BJP in this episode,” he told the media at Nagpur airport.
Fadnavis also defended state BJP president Chandrakant Patil’s letter to home minister Amit Shah demanding a CBI probe into dismissed inspector Sachin Waze’s letter to Pawar and transport minister Anil Parab. “It’s the job of the opposition to demand an inquiry into such allegations. There’s nothing wrong with it. We’ve never labelled anyone a criminal or demanded that they should be sent behind bars.”
The former CM was responding to Pawar’s statement on the ED attaching assets of over Rs65 crore linked to a firm controlled by him in connection with the MSCB scam. He had said that “many such inquiries were conducted in the past and nothing substantial was found”.
Speaking on the news of the government issuing notification for gathering empirical data of OBCs in state, the LOP said it was a welcome move as the Supreme Court order of December 13, 2019, had very categorically stated that for granting quota it needed empirical data to be supplied by the State Backward Classes Commission from all 36 districts. “The MVA constituents, however, continued to point fingers towards the Centre while shying away from its own responsibility of collecting the data. The SC needs empirical data and not the census. Had the government acted earlier, we could have got the reservation back.”
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MVA govt is killing democracy
Flaying CM Uddhav Thackeray’s government for limiting the Maharashtra assembly’s monsoon session to just two days, Fadnavis charged it with murdering democracy by not allowing the opposition to raise issues.
“As we had boycotted the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) meeting after a two-day session was proposed, we came to know that the government isn’t allowing legislators to use the unstarred questions, calling attention motions and discussions to raise issues pertaining to the people. It has never happened in the legislature’s history. Even if those weren’t discussed in the houses, their starred answers were provided.”
He added the MVA government didn’t want the opposition to talk, and they knew that in supplementary demands the opposition wouldn’t be getting much time to raise the issues. “We will take help from the media to raise the issues, if we’re not allowed to talk inside the legislature.”