In a development that has brought the differences between the ruling Shiv Sena and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on a crucial issue out in the open, NCP chief Sharad Pawar on Friday expressed his displeasure over Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray’s decision to let the NIA take over the investigations into the 2018 Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case.
A day after State Home Minister Anil Deshmukh of the NCP said that he had been “overruled” his stand by withdrawing objections to the NIA taking over the investigations into the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case, Pawar voiced his unhappiness over Uddhav agreeing to hand over the case to the central investigating agency.
Talking to media persons at Kolhapur in western Maharashtra, Pawar said: “Under the Constitution, maintaining law & order is a State subject. In the first place, it was improper on the Centre to encroach upon the rights of the state and take over the case from the Pune police. It was much more improper on the state government’s part to support the Centre’s move (to ask the NIA to take over the case).
Alluding to the Chief Minister’s decision to withdraw the State Government’s objections to NIA taking over the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case, Pawar said: “The Chief Minister has powers to decide on whether or not to hand over the case to the NIA. But, our stand on the issue has that in the Bhima-Koregaon case, the conduct of state home department officials was objectionable. …Meetings took place between 9 am and 11 am (in Mumbai) and the Centre took the decision (to hand over the case to the NIA) at 3 pm (on January 25)”.
On his part, State Home Minister Anil Deshmukh had said on Thursday: “The Bhima-Koregaon case earlier being investigated by the Maharashtra police After the Centre handed over the case to the NIA, as the Home Minister of the state I had taken a stand that if the Union Government wanted to hand over the probe to the NIA, it should have taken the State Government into confidence. We had taken the same stand, while fighting the case in Pune court. All I can say is that the chief minister has the power to overrule my stand”.
It may be recalled that on January 25 —a day after the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) handed over the investigations in the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case to the NIA, a miffed Pawar had charged that the ruling BJP – with an acute fear of being exposed in the case – had hurriedly handed over the investigations to the NIA. He had demanded that an independent panel to set up to hold comprehensive probe into the manner in which the Pune police had investigated the case. “Only an independent probe will bring out truth in the case,” he said.
“The re-investigations are necessary in the case, because the Centre’s move has aroused suspicions. The Centre’s decision to hand over the case to the NIA within hours after the State’s deputy chief minister and Home Minister reviewed the case with the state’s police officials. Under the Constitution, powers of dealing with law and order have been vested with the States. The Centre might have apprehended that if a re-investigation is ordered into the case, the previous BJP gove3rnment and its hand-picked officials might be exposed,” Pawar had said.
“Prima facie it appears that the Pune police misused their powers during the investigations. The Centre may have handed over the case to the NIA, but there is a need for the state government to investigate if the Pune police misused their powers to frame the activists in the case,” Pawar said.