Rift in state Congress as ex-MLA demands CM sack Dairy Minister Sunil Kedar

@the_news_21 

Pune: Former legislator Ashish Deshmukh has in a letter to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray demanding the dismissal of fellow Congressman and Minister for Dairy Development and Animal Husbandry Sunil Kedar from the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) cabinet. Deshmukh’s letter has dealt a blow to the Maharashtra Congress which is already rife with internal turmoil and factionalism.

Deshmukh, in his letter, demanded that Kedar not only be dismissed from the state cabinet but also be prosecuted separately in the Rs. 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, 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 to the tune of hundreds of crores of rupees. 

Deshmukh alleged that Kedar got his lawyer-friend, who is head of the State Congress legal cell, appointed as government pleader in the case. In his letter dated August 22, the former legislator said that it amounted to “conflict of interest” and that Kedar’s ‘appointee’ should not be allowed to argue the case.  

The letter accused Kedar of making this move with the sole aim of getting himself acquitted. Deshmukh said that the case had dragged on for 19 years for now and that 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, Deshmukh, who was earlier with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), demanded that the appointment of Kedar’s handpicked ‘candidate’ as government pleader be scrapped forthwith and the Minister himself sacked from the state cabinet. 

According to political observers, Kedar’s ouster would make Deshmukh, a former MLA from Katol in Nagpur a prominent face of the Congress in Vidarbha. 

Meanwhile, as Deshmukh demanded the ouster of his own party colleague, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said that it will not demand 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. He further remarked that it did not behove of Kedar to attend cabinet meetings when such grave charges have been levelled against him.