Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh resigned hours after the Bombay high court directed the CBI to conduct a preliminary inquiry into allegations of “corrupt malpractices” made by former Mumbai police chief Param Bir Singh against him. A CBI team from New Delhi is slated to arrive in the city to initiate the probe after discussing the court order with its legal team.
Singh had, in an 8-page letter to CM Uddhav Thackeray on March 20, alleged Deshmukh had met subordinate police officers, including suspended API Sachin Waze, and asked for “collection” of £10 million from various establishments in Mumbai. Deshmukh has denied the allegations, and his party NCP had earlier said there was no need for him to quit though the BJP had demanded his resignation.
Senior NCP leader and labour and excise minister Dilip Walse Patil is likely to take over the reins of the home department. Deshmukh is 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 chief minister Ajit Pawar, Deshmukh first called on NCP president Sharad Pawar 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 Pawar but had been at the receiving end for inept handling of the Waze episode.
Observing that it will not countenance violation of constitutional principles of integrity by anyone howsoever high an office he may hold, the Bombay HC, while asking the CBI to probe allegations against Deshmukh, said the “Constitution envisages a rule of law and not rule of goons having political support”. “It is indeed unheard of and unprecedented that a minister could be so openly accused of wrongdoings and corrupt practices by none other than a senior police officer, attracting wide attention from all and sundry,” said the HC bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Girish Kulkarni.
