Adarsh Society Scam: Chavan to stays, for now

PTI

New Delhi, 01 November 2010:  Congress president Sonia Gandhi held consultations with senior party leaders on Monday on the fate of Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan who has been embroiled in an upscale housing society scam in Mumbai. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Defence Minister A K Antony and senior party leader Ahmed Patel met Gandhi and are understood to have discussed the matter.

 

A decision by the Congress party is expected to take some more time. "Yesterday in the night I had said that we require more time to study the documents and report to the Congress president. That position continues," Pranab Mukherjee, head of the two-member committee including Defence Minister AK Antony, told reporters after a meeting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

 

The senior party leader said that in today’s meeting with Gandhi, the Maharashtra issue was not discussed. The discussions related to tomorrow’s AICC meeting, he said. The meeting took place even as the embattled Chief Minister left for Mumbai early this morning. Talk in the political circles was that Chavan had stayed put in the capital to meet Mukherjee who returned late on Sunday evening from West Bengal.

 

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, whose ministry’s clearance was also an issue in the matter, also joined the meeting. The parleys come a day ahead of the AICC meeting. Chavan had offered to resign on Saturday during a meeting with Gandhi in connection with the controversial Adarsh Co-operative Housing Society which was supposedly meant for widows and veterans of the Kargil war.

 

Gandhi had asked Mukherjee and Antony, who is also in-charge of party affairs in Maharashtra, to look into the matter and submit a report. On his return from Kolkata, Mukherjee had a meeting with Antony on Sunday night and said that he would require some more time to go through the documents related to the alleged scam.

 

There were reports that more Congress and NCP leaders including three former Maharashtra chief ministers - Union Heavy Industry Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, Union Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde and current Revenue Minister Narayan Rane -- and Maharashtra minister Ajit Pawar, nephew of NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, had links with the controversial upscale project.

 

Deshmukh, Rane and Pawar denied the allegations of any links, saying they had not recommended any cases for allotment of flats in the 31-storey housing complex which stands on the land supposed to be meant for Kargil war heroes and widows. Accusing the media of making a hue and cry over the issue, Shinde told NDTV that he may have unknowingly signed documents but has no benamni investments.

 

The NCP meanwhile, whose members also find mention deny any involvement as well. Questions were also being raised in the chief minister’s camp as how action can be taken against Chavan on the Adarsh issue when other Congress leaders from Maharashtra were also allegedly involved.