Maharashtra: Aide arrested, Khadse takes dig at Fadnavis

On May 13, the ACB arrested Khadse’s close associate Gajanan Patil, who was accused of demanding a Rs 30-crore bribe in a land allotment case.

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Khadse’s remarks came hours after Fadnavis said there was “no question of interfering or intervening in the agency’s probe, and that the agency had been on the case for over three months”. The ACB FIR, though, suggests the agency has been probing the matter for nearly nine months.

Welcoming a “fair probe”, Khadse said the complainant in the case had earlier levelled “baseless” corruption charges against senior bureaucrats including Pravin Singh Pardeshi, who is currently a principal secretary in the Chief Minister’s Office, and Chief Secretary Swadheen Kshatriya. “All I wish to convey is that there are records suggesting that the complainant in the matter is a habitual complainant. He has been persistently raising corruption allegations against government functionaries since 2008,” Khadse said.

The Opposition has been gunning for interrogation of Khadse’s OSD Unmesh Mahajan, with the ACB FIR containing recorded conversations between Patil and the complainant in which the former allegedly indicates that the bribe amount was conveyed by one ‘Unmesh’.

Khadse rubbished the allegations against Mahajan and his office. “This is a peculiar case when action has been taken by the ACB on the basis of an alleged conversation over a bribe demand between two private persons. I haven’t come across any such instance in my four decades in politics,” he said.

The ACB arrested Patil on a complaint from economist Ramesh Jadhav, 70.