Few interesting news items which caught my eyes, and would like to share with you all, with my opinion/comments on them.
1 It has been reported that FIR has been lodged against Nationalist Congress Party’s (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar (nephew of NCP’s founder Sharad Pawar) and 69 others in Maharashtra State Co operative Bank (MSCB)scam. The FIR has been filed by Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of Mumbai Police, on the directions of Bombay High Court, has also named Peasants and Workers Party (PWP) leader Jayant Patil, and officials from the bank in 34 districts of Maharashtra.
According to the FIR, all the accused allegedly caused losses to the banks amounting to several thousand Crores, between 2007-2011. An inspection by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), as well as a charge sheet filed by quasi judicial commission under the Maharashtra Cooperative Societies (MCS) Act blamed the decisions, actions and inactions of Ajit Pawar and other accused of loss. The NABARD report said that breach of several banking laws and RBI guidelines were flouted by the accused persons while distributing loans to sugar factories and spinning Mills, and subsequent default on repayment and recovery of the disbursed loans. These actions by the accused persons resulted into the loss of Rs 25,000 Cr to the govt.
This all started when a local activist Surinder Arora complained to EOW in 2015 and approached High Court, seeking that action to be taken against the persons involved in this. In view of the deficiencies pointed out by NABARD, the RBI in May 2011 directed to supersede the MSCB Board of Directors and appoint an Administrator to look into Bank’s working.
The HC in last week gave the decision and direction that prima facie there is case against all the accused persons and they should be charge sheeted under MCS Act, as there are credible evidences against all the accused in this case and directed the EOW to file an FIR. The FIR has been registered under relevant sections of IPC for cheating, forgery, criminal breach of trust and corruption.
In my opinion all this cases against leaders of NCP are long over due, Ajit Pawar’s name also figure in Irrigation scam which happened during the rule of Congress/NCP during 1999-2014. Now it seems, as BJP’s equation with Shiv Sena is at comfortable level therefore they may not require outside support of NCP, who were ready with the offer since 2014. Therefore the cases against the NCP leaders are now picking up pace as the elections are approaching for state assembly.
2 Few days back there was a news item in news papers which are published in Maharashtra, that film star Sanjay Dutt is joining the political party known as Rashtriya Samaj Paksh- RSP (which is in alliance with BJP in Maharashtra). The statement of confirming this news was attributed to Mahadev Jankar (founder of this party) and who is also a minister of Animal Husbandry and Dairy Development in Maharashtra govt. But in today’s news paper I saw statement issued by Sanjay Dutt, which says “ I will not be joining any political party. Mr Jankar is dear friend and brother of mine and I humbly wish him good luck for his future endeavours,”.
Sometimes I fail to understand the politicians love for film stars, yes I agree that calling a film star to a public rally , generally attracts crowd who are generally star fans, but in the case of Sanjay Dutt, he is not a big star now, who will be able to pull the crowd to the political rallies. With the state assembly elections in few states are approaching, there will be many such announcements and few smaller stars may fight even elections, but do they serve any purpose in long run. In my opinion there are only few film stars who gained big popularity in political field , the prime example are MG Ramachandran, NT Ramarao, Jayalalitha and to a certain extent Bollywood stars such as Shatrughan Sinha, late Vinod Khanna, Hema Malini & Raj Babbar. Others who join any political party just before elections generally fade away in few years, classical examples Dharmendra, Rajesh Khanna, Nagma and many more. My only request to all political parties will be that they should not invite any film star to join their party, unless he/she shows long term commitment. Now a days there are some fading film stars who will join politics as the alternative career, they should realize politics is not always what it seems to be when you are outsider, but when you are insider then only you realize that how dirty it can become.
Awaiting your comments/views/feed backs.
Anil Malik
Mumbai,India
27th Aug 2019
R. N. Mungale.
Ajit Pawar has to answer a lot of questions.
Sanjay has already clarified that he is not joining any political party.