Chavan Faces Crisis as Pawar Resigns, NCP Ministers Offer To Quit


Mumbai: Maharashtra's Democratic Front government suddenly plunged into a crisis on Tuesday as Deputy Chief Minister and NCP leader Ajit Pawar quit the cabinet, while other party ministers offered to resign and legislators called for leaving the Congress-led coalition.

Pawar, 53, resigned in a cloud of allegations that he had arbitrarily doled out irrigation contracts worth over 20,000 crore when he was the water resources minister 1999-2009, before he was elevated as deputy chief minister and handled the plum finance and energy portfolios. However, Pawar said he would remain the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) Legislature Party leader until his party and legislators desired.

He declared that he would not join the government as a minister until his name was "cleared" of the alleged irregularities. "People are jealous of the rise of the NCP," Pawar asserted, but did not elaborate.

Amid a clamour by some NCP legislators to quit the ruling coalition, all the remaining 19 party ministers in the 43-member Prithviraj Chavan government also offered to quit and sent in their resignations to state party chief Madhukarrao Pichhad.

A numbed Congress kept mum over the surprise developments while Chavan, waiting to board a plane at Mumbai to go to Pune, immediately returned to 'Varsha', the chief minister's official residence, for consultations with his party leaders.

NCP chief and union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, senior leader and union minister Praful Patel as well as Ajit Pawar himself, however, assured the Congress that the NCP would not quit the ruling coalition or destabilise the government.

"There is no question of pulling out from the Maharashtra government," Sharad Pawar told Times Now channel, adding the state government is "stable".

"My word is final. No other NCP minister would resign from the state government," asserted the NCP chief, who said he had given "permission" to Ajit Pawar, his nephew, to resign.

The opposition, particularly Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray, attempted to fuel the crisis by calling upon Chavan to accept the NCP challenge by accepting all the resignations and not to succumb to its "pressure tactics".

Source: IANS