Ajit Pawar. File.
| Photo Credit: PTI
Rubbishing he had anything to do with the auction of a three-acre prime parcel of land in Pune’s Yerwada area in 2010, Deputy Chief Minister and rebel Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar on October 17 refuted suggestions that he had ever “pressurised” former Pune Police Commissioner Meeran Chadha Borwankar to hand over the plot of land.
Mr. Pawar read out the relevant documents from 2008 concerning the land auction and said any decision on the said plot of land pertained to the Revenue and Home Departments of the then government led by the Congress and the NCP.
“I was just the Guardian Minister and had no say in issues pertaining to other departments. I did not ‘direct’ then Home Minister R.R. Patil to ‘do this or do that’ while taking a decision on the plot of land. I never got involved in other Ministers’ departments,” the 64-year-old NCP leader said.
Ms. Borwankar, a retired IPS officer, in her recently published memoir, Madam Commissioner, has claimed the then District Minister had pressurised her to hand over the plot of land that could have been developed for the benefit of the Police Department to D.B. Realty’s Shahid Balwa, who was later arrested in the 2G scam. However, she did not name Mr. Pawar but has stated she refused to hand over the Yerawada land, stating that it would be useful for building new offices and residential quarters for the Police Department.
“He [the then District Minister] had a huge paper map of the area with him. He explained that the auction had been successfully concluded and I should proceed to hand over the land to the top bidder. I replied that as Yerawada had become literally the centre of Pune, the police would never get such prime land in future. And that we needed it to construct more offices as well as residential quarters for the police,” the book says.
Ms. Borwankar submitted that she had at the time recently taken over her position, and giving the police land to a private party would be perceived as “the new police commissioner having sold herself out”.
“But the minister simply overruled me and insisted that I complete the process, which he declared was over,” according to an excerpt from the book.
Mr. Pawar said that he might have asked the then Pune Police Commissioner about the status of the land deal, but not “pressurised” her. “Why would I do so?” he asked. He did not name Ms. Borwankar.
“I admit that I may have asked her about the status of the land deal since it belongs to the Police Department, and she may have expressed her opposition to the transfer of land, except that I did not try to push the deal. The reason I asked her about the deal was a committee, which also includes Pune Police Commissioner, had taken the decision to hand over the land to a private builder, but that decision was not being implemented,” Mr. Pawar said.
He said that the retired officer probably wanted publicity or sensationalism for her book with the claims. “Forget about me getting involved in that deal, I didn’t even attend any meeting to take the decision on this,” the Deputy CM said.
Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole and NCP MLA of the Sharad Pawar faction, Rohit Pawar, demanded a judicial probe into the matter.
“What is there to probe? Everything is on paper and those are baseless allegations,” Mr. Ajit Pawar said.