MVA shouldn’t buckle under BJP pressure, says Congress
Ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) constituent Congress on Sunday called upon its partners, the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party, not to buckle under the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party’s pressure aimed at destabilising the state government in the wake of the letter-bomb crisis.
Congress state General Secretary and spokesperson Sachin Sawant said that since the last over six years, the BJP-led Centre has been making attempts to undermine all opposition parties’ governments in different states.
Administrative officers under the jurisdiction of the state are being pressured with the help of the Central investigation agencies and there are many examples like (then Comptroller and Auditor General) Vinod Rai before the country, he said.
His comments came in the wake of the massive controversy triggered after former Mumbai Commissioner of Police Param Bir Singh levelled allegations that Home Minister Anil Deshmukh had ordered arrested-suspended policeman Sachin Vaze to collect Rs 100 crore per month, leading to demands for the minister’s sacking.
“This is nothing new… An ex-DIG of Gujarat Police D.G. Vanzara had leveled serious allegations against the then Gujarat HM and current Home Minister of India Amit Shah. Did Amit Shah resign then? Later Vanzara was given an extension by the (Gujarat) regime Does it mean that Vanzara’s allegations were true,” Sawant asked.
Similarly, another Gujarat police officer Sanjeev Bhatt had levelled serious allegations against the then CM Narendra Modi – now the Prime Minister, “but did CM Modi resign at that time?”
Referring to ex-Mumbai top cop’s letter of Saturday, the Congress leader said that an officer close to him was in NIA custody and facing grave charges, and the needle of suspicions could point to Singh.
“Hence, the possibility of the letter (by Singh) being written under duress from Central agencies cannot be ruled out,” he contended.
Questioning certain points raised in Singh’s letter, the Congress leader wondered how the accusation of ‘collection’ was possible when since past one year, all hotels were shut due to the coronavirus pandemic, and how did Vaze go to meet Deshmukh who was down with Covid-19 and in hospital at that time.
Sawant contended that attempts were made by Singh to “hastily create” evidence of (WhatsApp) conversations with the words like “Urgent pleas” as he was anticipating his transfer.
The Congress spokesperson also questioned Singh’s views in his letter on probe into Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli MP Mohan Delkar’s suicide as an outcome of “pressures from the Centre” as the BJP was involved in it, although the MVA government wanted to probe it in depth.
Accusing the BJP of adopting “double-standards”, Sawant noted that Delkar had written to the Prime Minister and Home Minister besides the Lok Sabha Speaker and appealed to the Parliamentary Committee on Privileges, but nobody came to his help or demanded the resignation of UT Administrator Praful K. Patel.
He sought to know why the NIA rushed to probe the cases when the ATS had decided to seek Vaze’s custody, how was the email from Tihar Jail by Jaish-ul-Hind sent under the nose of the BJP government, who provides mobile phones to the criminals there, and how does the BJP government manage to get advance information about different investigations and react promptly like from a script.
