Ex-MLA Ashish Deshmukh writes to CM demanding resignation of Dairy Minister Sunil Kedar
With the Maharashtra Congress riven by internal turmoil and factionalism, another blow was dealt by former legislator Ashish Deshmukh, who has demanded that Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray dismiss State Minister and fellow Congress leader Sunil Kedar from the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) Cabinet after accusing him of getting a lawyer-friend of his appointed as government pleader in the multi-crore Nagpur District Central Cooperative Bank (NDCCB) scam case, in which Mr. Kedar is one of the main accused.
Mr. Deshmukh, in a letter to Mr.Thackeray, also demanded that Mr. Kedar, who is the Dairy and Animal Husbandry Minister, be prosecuted separately in the ₹156 crore government securities scam.
Massive irregularities within the NDCCB first came to light in 2002. After a protracted investigation over the next 12 years, Mr. Kedar, who was the bank’s chairman in 2000, was slapped with a Bombay High Court notice (issued by the Nagpur Bench) in 2014, which directed him and the bank’s then general manager Ashok Choudhary and nine others to pay up on defaulted dues amounting to hundreds of crores of rupees.
Alleging that Mr. Kedar got his lawyer-friend, who is head of the State Congress’s legal cell, appointed as government pleader in the case, Mr. Deshmukh, in his letter dated August 22, said that it amounted to conflict of interest and that Mr. Kedar’s “appointee” should not be allowed to fight the case.
The letter accused Mr. Kedar of making this move with the sole aim of getting himself acquitted.
Mr. Deshmukh said that as the case had dragged on for 19 years now, Mr. Kedar was using every trick in the book to get off the hook and escape punitive action.
Stating that he was acting as a “whistleblower” in the public interest, Mr. Deshmukh, who was earlier with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), demanded that the appointment of Mr. Kedar’s “candidate” as government pleader be scrapped forthwith and the Minister himself sacked from the Cabinet.
According to observers, Mr. Kedar’s ouster would make Mr. Deshmukh, a former MLA from Katol in Nagpur, the most prominent Congress face in Vidarbha.
Meanwhile, while Mr. Deshmukh clamoured for the ouster of his own party colleague, the Opposition BJP said that it will not demand Mr. Kedar’s resignation until the charges against him are proven by the court.
“If action is taken against all Ministers in the Uddhav Thackeray Cabinet against whom cases are pending, then half the Cabinet will have to be dismissed…. But it is not the BJP’s disposition to demand for resignations on an impulse,” said BJP State President Chandrakant Patil.
At the same time, Mr. Patil said it did not behove of Mr. Kedar to keep attending Cabinet meetings when such grave charges have been levelled against him.