Chapter is ‘not closed’: Bombay HC order takes NCP by surprise – Times of India

MUMBAI: Anil Deshmukh on Monday became the second minister of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government, in power for one year and four months, to quit in the wake of a controversy. His resignation, the first in the ‘Wazegate’ controversy, comes a little over a month after Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Rathod quit as forest minister following a scandal over the suicide of a 22-year-old woman in Pune.
Accompanied by deputy CM Ajit Pawar, Deshmukh first called on NCP president Sharad Pawar on Monday to brief him on the outcome of the public interest litigation filed by Singh before the HC. Pawar quickly approved Deshmukh’s plea to resign from the cabinet “on moral grounds”. Deshmukh is counted among the trusted aides of Sharad Pawar but had been at the receiving end for inept handling of the Waze episode.
In a brief letter to CM Uddhav Thackeray, Deshmukh said since the HC had directed the CBI to conduct a preliminary probe against him, he did not think it fit to continue in the cabinet on moral grounds. “While disposing of a petition filed by Jayashree Patil, the High Court has asked the CBI director to conduct a preliminary probe against me. Under such circumstances, on moral grounds, I feel I should quit. I am quitting on my own, please relieve from my post of home minister,” Deshmukh stated in the letter. Deshmukh’s resignation was later accepted by governor B S Koshyari.
The NCP was apparently taken by surprise when the HC asked the CBI to conduct a preliminary probe in the matter. All along, the NCP had expected that since the SC had declined to step in and the state government had set up a one-man high-level committee of Justice Kailash Uttamchand Chandiwal to probe into the charges of corruption raised in Singh’s letter, the chapter would be a closed one.
In his letter to the CM, Singh had, apart from mentioning his own unceremonious exit from the CP’s post, raised two key issues: the “target” allegedly given by Deshmukh to Waze, and the alleged pressure exerted by the home minister on Mumbai police to register an abetment to suicide case in the death of Dadra Nagar Haveli Lok Sabha MP Mohan Delkar. Singh had also written that he had briefed NCP president Sharad Pawar, CM Thackeray and deputy CM Ajit Pawar about the matter.