Adarsh turns into Cong nightmare
TNN, Nov 1, 2010, 01.25am IST
NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: The Adarsh housing scam, which The Times of India exposed a week ago, is getting murkier by the day. The prospect of Ashok Chavan's ouster as Maharashtra CM has triggered a public blame game over responsibility for the scam.
On the day Chavan braced for a decision on his fate, with Pranab Mukherjee holding discussion with A K Antony on Sunday night, his predecessor Vilasrao Deshmukh washed his hands of the scam and blamed the chief minister for bringing civilians into a housing society meant for military personnel. ''The list had come for my approval only for my counter signature and you do it in good faith,'' he said.
The attack on Chavan followed disclosures that Deshmukh and three other former chief ministers — Sushil Kumar Shinde, Narayan Rane and Shivajirao Nilangekar Patil — had recommended flats in the controversial society for people close to them. (TOI in its Sunday edition had front-paged a report about how a dozen top Congress and NC politicians, including former CMs and powerful serving ministers, had played an active role in cornering flats in lieu of favours they had doled out to the society.)
By Sunday evening, the muck had spread wide, with the electronic media naming state power and irrigation minister Ajit Pawar, home minister R R Patil, rural development minister Jayant Patil, forest minister Patangarao Kadam, and food and civil supplies minister R R Patil as those whose 'associates' allegedly had flats in the society.
The revelations about Adarsh's linkage to all these political heavyweights were seen as designed to get the leadership to widen the scope of the probe into culpability for the real estate scam.
Deshmukh immediately rebutted the charge. ''There is nobody in the society who can claim to be my relative or near and dear one... This appears to be a conspiracy to defame me,'' he said.
Read more: Adarsh turns into Cong nightmare - The Times of India
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