Former Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan and ex-Jharkhand CM Madhu Koda were on Monday asked by the Election Commission to appear before it on May 23 for allegedly giving incorrect accounts of their poll expenses.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Tuesday said he will speak to leaders of his party Congress and those from ally Nationalist Congress Party before taking a decision on the resignation of his deputy Ajit Pawar.
Former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan on Wednesday pleaded his innocence in the Adarsh housing society scam, saying he never cleared any files relating to the project.
This is the second meeting of Ajit Pawar, who was sworn in as Maharashtra deputy chief minister on July 2, and his MLAs with the NCP supremo in two days.
This was the first meeting between Sharad Pawar and the group-led by Ajit Pawar after he rebelled against his uncle and joined the Eknath Shinde government on July 2.
'During the conversation there were occasions when he appeared distinctly uncomfortable.'
Dismissing suggestions that he is not in the best of terms with Nationalist Congress Party, Maharashtra Chief Minister-designate Prithviraj Chavan on Wednesday said he would take everyone along to provide a good government to the state.
Ashok Chavan on Tuesday said his resignation as Maharashtra chief minister does not prove his guilt in the Adarsh Housing Society scam and claimed he was '100 per cent' sure that he will come clean on the issue. "Acceptance of my resignation by the Congress does not prove my guilt in the Adarsh Housing Society scam," Chavan told reporters after tendering his resignation to Governor K Sankaranarayanan. "I resigned because of Cong's moral stand on such issues," he said.
In a startling repeat of the manoeuvres made by Bharatiya Janata Party members of Legislative Assembly in Karnataka to unseat the government of former Chief Minister Sadanand Gowda, over 40 Maharashtra Congress legislators raised a similar demand against Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Tuesday, saying he needed to go if he couldn't alter his way of functioning.
Earlier attempts by the state governments to introduce the reservation for Marathas have been struck down by courts.
For now, Modi's government appears singularly focussed on demonstrating that it is not in any way inhibited by the BJP's loss of a majority, and will continue along its patented path of bulldozing all opposition and doing just as it likes, asserts Prem Panicker.
Patkar and his three partners allegedly bagged Mumbai civic body contracts fraudulently for managing COVID-19 field hospitals during the pandemic, the official said.
The new chief minister, if backed by the Congress high command, can give Maharashtra a chance to recover from being looted by rent-seeking politicians, says Mahesh Vijapurkar.
Nearly two months after he was chargesheeted in the Adarsh housing society scam, former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan on Monday moved the Bombay high court seeking quashing of the cheating and corruption case registered against him by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan has silenced his critics by successfully diffusing the indefinite auto rickshaw drivers' strike that was to begin from November 9.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan on Saturday insisted that he had not given up on the demand for Union Territory status for disputed boundary areas in Karnataka but refrained from raising it with party chief Sonia Gandhi.
In a setback for former Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan, the Bombay High Court on Wednesday rejected CBI's petition to drop his name as an accused in the Adarsh scam case.
The NCP chief was accompanied by his wife Pratibha Pawar, Rajya Sabha member Vandana Chavan, NCP spokesperson Ankush Kakde, party's Pune city unit president Prashant Jagtap and many other party workers.
Union Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh on Tuesday appeared to be laying the blame for the Adarsh scam at former Chief Minister Ashok Chavan's door when he told the judicial panel probing it that the land was allotted to the society after a go-ahead from the revenue department.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Friday said that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is spreading lies and rumours through the social media and Congress workers should wake up to its thread and respond to it.
Laying down a host of criterion for the selection of candidates for the coming Lok Sabha elections, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has made it known that no tainted leader will be given a ticket by the party.
In its internal assessment, the Congress hopes to get around 91 seats, while it expects the NCP to get 49 to 51 seats. The coalition will need at least 145 MLAs for a simple majority to form the government in the 288-seat Maharashtra Assembly. The coalition is confident that it will manage some independent MLAs and small parties to keep its government afloat.
Deora had recently expressed disapproval at the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena-UBT laying claim to the South Mumbai Lok Sabha seat.
The war of words between Chief Minister Ashok Chavan and Raj Thackeray in poll-bound Maharashtra has intensified with the former saying the MNS chief should act in a movie by Karan Johar and the latter calling the Congress leader "brainless".
Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray chief Uddhav Thackeray will not switch to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, Maharashtra Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar president Jayant Patil asserted on Thursday, seeking to scotch speculation about a possible crossover by his key ally.
Addressing a press conference in Satara, Sharad Pawar also said he has launched a statewide tour to strengthen the NCP and boost the confidence of party workers, unfazed by actions of a few leaders.
Former Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and Chief minister Ashok Chavan have reached Sonia Gandhi's residence with 10 independent legislators of the Maharashtra assembly. The was a huge commotion outside the Congress chief house. This demonstration comes in the wake of claims by suspended Congress legislator Narayan Rane that the Maharashtra government did not enjoy a majority in the assembly.
India pacer S Sreesanth and his Rajasthan Royals team mate Ankeet Chavan have been banned for life for their alleged role in the spot-fixing scandal in the Indian Premier League, the BCCI announced on Friday.
Expressing happiness that Anna Hazare called off his fast, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Wendesday said the anti-graft crusader's advisors seemed to have a political agenda.
'The people preferred Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar...'
Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan says government experience is viewed as important in some quarters, but he does not know if Rahul Gandhi joining the government after 2009 elections would have been better for Congress' prospects in the Lok Sabha polls.
Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, BJP chief J P Nadda and new party entrant Ashok Chavan and Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and L Murugan were among the 41 candidates elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha on Tuesday while Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh will witness polling on February 27.
The Maharashtra Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday posted a four-year-old video of its leader and former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis announcing that he will return to helm the state, prompting speculation in political circles.
Unfazed by the Congress attack over the letter row involving him, Bharatiya Janata Party president Nitin Gadkari on Saturday said that even Congress Chief Minister of Maharashtra Prithviraj Chavan and its state chief Manikarao Thakre had written letters in favour of the Goshikhurd project.
Mumbai Cricket Association joint secretary Nitin Dalal on Froiday said he felt pity for promising left-arm spinner Ankeet Chavan, who was banned for life by the BCCI on spot-fixing charges in the Indian Premier League, saying that he was on the verge of being picked for India 'A' team.
Blaming opponents of the anti-superstition bill for the killing of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan has said organisations behind such acts should be isolated and their activities stopped.
The ministry of defence on Friday filed an intervening application in the Bombay high court opposing the petition filed by former Chief Minister Ashok Chavan seeking to quash the FIR lodged against him by CBI in the Adarsh housing society scam.
Kerala Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan accused his Maharashtra counterpart of "lying" on the CVC P J Thomas appointment fiasco to "hide his fault."
Chavan, 83, underwent a surgery at a city hospital for removal of a blood clot on February 20. He was on life support system for the past gew days, hospital sources said.
Chavan, who had to step down as Chief Minister soon after the alleged scam surfaced in November 2010, is one of the 14 accused in the case filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation, which is probing several irregularities and violation of rules in construction of the 31-storeyed building in upscale Colaba.
