Maharashtra BJP president Chandrakant Patil on Tuesday said he would not allow the upcoming budget session of the State legislature to function until the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government sought the resignation of Minister Nawab Malik.
Speaking in Kolhapur, Mr. Patil expressed ‘shock’ that Mr. Malik, a senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader, who was recently arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with a case of money laundering and alleged links to underworld gangster Dawood Ibrahim, had not yet resigned. He alleged that MVA government was actively backing him instead.
“On February 23, the ED arrested Nawab Malik. The minimum expectation from Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and NCP chief Sharad Pawar, who remote controls the MVA government, was that a person [Mr. Malik] who had a direct hand in the activities of a criminal like Dawood Ibrahim activities would be asked to resign. Not only has this not happened so far, but the MVA’s leaders came out in Mr. Malik’s support by staging a protest outside the Mantralaya,” said the BJP state chief, warning that his party would not cease the agitation for Mr. Malik’s resignation.
Mr. Patil said that by not seeking the Minister’s resignation, the Maharashtra government was expressing its support for the criminal activities of Dawood Ibrahim.
“Even an ordinary civil servant after being arrested has to be suspended within 24 hours. Here, a Cabinet Minister, whose links with the underworld are deemed serious enough that he is given ED custody by the court, has not yet been taken out of the State cabinet... The BJP will not permit the upcoming Budget Session from March 3 to function and our statewide agitation will go on until Mr. Malik resigns,” said the BJP leader.
The arrested NCP Minister, who had made headlines last year for his series of ‘exposes’ and allegations against the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and certain BJP leaders in the Aryaan Khan-Mumbai cruise drug bust case, had repeatedly said that it was only a matter of time before the BJP-led Centre unleashed central agencies against him.
Following his salvos against the NCB and some BJP leaders, former Chief Minister and BJP leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis had alleged that Mr. Malik had apparently struck a property deal with 1993 Mumbai bomb blast convict Sardar Shahwali Khan and Mohd Salim Ishaq Patel, said to be the ‘frontman’ of Haseena Parkar, Dawood Ibrahim’s sister.
According to Mr. Fadnavis, a prime property of 2.80 acres at LBS Marg in Kurla was brought by one Solidus Investment Private Limited for a meagre ₹30 lakh and that the signatory of this deal was Faraz Malik, Mr. Nawab Malik’s son.
“People haven’t forgotten he trauma of the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts. There were three other blasts in which Dawood’s gang members and his sister Haseena Parker was involved. Nawab Malik buys a prime land at throwaway prices according to Dawood’s plan and the money is utilized for funding terror activities,” alleged Mr. Patil.
Contrasting the firmness of late Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray with Uddhav Thackeray’s alleged dithering over seeking Mr. Malik’s resignation, Mr. Patil said the current Sena president and Maharashtra Chief Minister had no right to play with the country’s security by keeping such a minister in his cabinet.
When asked as to why the ED, widely criticised by the MVA parties as acting on behest of the BJP-led Central government, was probing Mr. Malik only now instead of taking action at the time of the erstwhile BJP government in the State, Mr. Patil remarked: “Had the link [between Mr. Malik and the underworld] been unearthed when Mr. Fadnavis was CM [2014-19], then the BJP would have immediately taken action.”
Seeking to drive a wedge between the three coalition partners, the BJP State chief claimed that just as the NCP had allegedly pressurised the Sena to seek the resignation of ex- Minister Sanjay Rathod, would the Sena now demand the same of the NCP now that one of the latter’s ministers was in the dock.
“Last year, ahead of the Assembly session, the NCP had pressed its ally [the Sena] to accept Rathod’s resignation…Now, will the Shiv Sena ask the same of the NCP?” said Mr. Patil.
While a number of senior Congress leaders have come out in support of Mr. Malik, the Sena has kept a marked distance from the affair, with Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray maintaining a studied silence. Apart from the odd tweet in Mr. Malik’s support by Sena spokesperson Sanjay Raut, Mr. Thackeray himself has not commented on the issue.
Last week, while almost all top NCP leaders and several Congress ministers had gathered at the Mahatma Gandhi statue near the Mantralaya to protest Mr. Malik’s arrest, the event was marked by the conspicuous absence of top Shiv Sena leaders excepting the token presence of senior Sena leader Subhash Desai and other lower party functionaries.
More tellingly, the Sena’s mouthpiece Saamana, with its penchant for fulminating against the BJP and the Centre’s misuse of central probe agencies, did not carry an editorial the day after Mr. Malik’s arrest.
