In his acute anxiety to clear his name from various controversies, including the much-discussed Dawood Ibrahim call logs case and Pune land deal, Maharashtra Revenue Minister Eknath Khadse finds himself sucked into a political whirlpool, a situation he may find rather difficult to extricate himself from.
Having embarrassed the ruling BJP leadership on the occasion of the NDA Government celebrating its two years’ term in office, an embattled Khadse appeared to be running out of options.
With the Opposition’s clamour for his resignation or dismissal mounting by the day and the ruling BJP having not come out in his defence in a strong manner as he was expecting, sources close to the beleaguered Minister said that he might be putting up a brave face, but he was under extreme pressure to salvage himself from the complex situation he was in.
What made matters worse for Khadse was that on Friday Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju described the allegations faced by the Maharashtra Revenue Minister as “seemingly disturbing” and said, “We are denying it”. Rijiju indicated that the Ministry of Home Affairs was investigating the matter.
Maintaining that the Centre would not rely on the “private investigations” by the Minister to clear his name from the Dawood call logs case, Rijiju told a leading English television channel, “I can only say this, the Minister seems to be quite serious about the allegations which have come out in the media against him. It is good that one must be concerned and if he has come out with certain positive and proactive steps. I think it is good. But thing is that the established agencies will have find out (the truth). We cannot rely on private investigations. This is something I cannot really comment at this point of time”.
Queried that if the Centre had taken seriously the calls purportedly received by Khadse on his mobile number (9423073667) from Dawood’s wife, Rijiju said, “We are not denying it.... the Minister has himself jumped out and said that it ( the matter) should be investigated. Definitely... Whatever seemingly disturbing (allegations) should be taken seriously and appropriate action should be initiated”
“But as I said, before various things come out in this kind of matter which is very serious in nature, it is difficult for a Minister to make a comment, because we will have to discuss in detail without our investigating agencies,” Rijiju said.
On its part, the Aam Admi Party’s leader Preeti Sharma Menon — who has been clamouring for Khadse’s dismissal – rubbished Rijiju’s comments, saying, “Rijiju’s statement that the charges against Khadse were serious and a probe was on shows that Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to give his underworld linked minister Khadse adequate time to destroy all evidences against him, delete incriminating chats, mails, communications and call logs and prepare a false alibi
before the Mumbai Police summons him for customary questioning”.
Incidentally, Rijiju’s comments within days after Khadse turned an investigator, gathered some information about the residential phone of Dawood using BJP family member of BJP leader Gurumukh Jagwani based in Karachi and passed on the same to the Mumbai police investigating the case.
There have been several twists and turns in the Dawood-Khadse call logs case. The Mumbai police initially gave a clean chit to the minister saying: “Our initial analysis of the cell phone no. 9423073667 indicated that there have been neither outgoing nor incoming calls from this cell number to that of the fugitive during the entire period of Sept 2015 to April 2016 as mentioned at the press conference”.
However, Mumbai Police Commissioner Datta Phadsilkar denied that the police had given a clean chit to the minister and said the initial comment by Joint Commissioner of Police (crime) Atulchandra Kulkarni was based on initial probe.