Amid raging Maharashtra battle, MVA, BJP slug it out via state, central agency ‘proxies’

The ED’s move came after the Sena-ruled Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) issued a notice to Opposition BJP leader Mohit Kamboj Bhartiya for “inspection” of his residential building in Mumbai. Bhartiya has been vocal against the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA)-led Maharashtra government.

As the BJP, which rules the Centre, and the Sena-led MVA, which includes the NCP and the Congress, continue to be locked in a bitter, fierce conflict, a proxy battle seems to have also been waged by the two camps by unleashing various central and state agencies against each other over the last two years, in which enquiries, summons, arrests, property attachments, and even property inspections have been used as weapons. This is not only to intimidate leaders of rival camps but also to send out a signal that any action by one side will see retaliation by the other.

While various central agencies including the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Income Tax (IT) and CBI have been probing various cases linked to the Sena, NCP and Congress leaders, the Maharashtra government-controlled agencies like the police force and the civic bodies have been going after the BJP leaders too.

Currently, two MVA leaders and ex-ministers in the Thackeray cabinet, Anil Deshmukh and Nawab Malik, are behind bars in connection with ED cases.

Soon after the ED’s 22 March move, NCP chief Sharad Pawar called it a “gross abuse of central agencies to settle political scores”. Sena leader and its most vocal face, Sanjay Raut said, “If the Opposition feels that by pressuring the main pillar (Uddhav) of MVA you can get the government to fall and implement President’s rule, then all I can say is – wake up.”

There are several instances of tit-for-tat action through the agencies controlled by either side.

On February 21, the BMC had inspected the eight-storey Juhu bungalow of the BJP’s Union minister Narayan Rane for alleged irregularities. Rane has been in the line of the MVA’s fire as the former Sainik and his son, BJP MLA Nitesh Rane, have been gunning for Thackerays and have even made a bid to link Uddhav’s son Aaditya, a state minister, to the June 8, 2020 case of Disha Salian’s suicide. On August 25 last year, the Maharashtra police arrested Narayan for making a derogatory remark against Uddhav. He got the bail on the same day. On February 2 this year, Nitesh was arrested in an attempt to murder case for allegedly attacking a Sena functionary.

On March 13, the Mumbai police crime branch recorded the statement of Opposition leader and ex-CM Devendra Fadnavis in a case related to alleged phone-tapping carried out by the State Intelligence Department (SID).

On March 14, the Mumbai police lodged an FIR against BJP leader Pravin Darekar for allegedly using bogus membership of a labour society to get elected as a director of one of the state’s biggest cooperative banks, the Mumbai District Central Cooperative Bank. He is also accused of allegedly cheating the state government and causing losses to the bank due to unrecovered loans. Darekar, in turn, alleged that the Congress and NCP leaders were involved in large-scale irregularities in co-operatives, and that if the MVA government does not take action, he will “provide the list to Union Minister of Cooperation Amit Shah and seek a CBI probe.”

Two months earlier, an FIR was filed against BJP leader Girish Mahajan and 28 others on charges of extortion, criminal intimidation, criminal conspiracy, causing hurt to extort confession or property, forgery and theft, which was based on a complaint filed by a lawyer Vijay Patil.While said sequence of events alleged in the FIR had taken place in early 2018, the case was registered in Jalgaon in December 2020 and transferred to Pune in January 2021.

As regards the central agencies, the ED arrested former Maharashtra minority affairs minister Nawab Malik and ex-home minister Anil Deshmukh on February 23, 2022 and November 2, 2021, respectively, on money laundering charges.

The arrest of Malik, who had been taking on the Centre and BJP leaders such as Fadnavis aggressively, was considered to be so “inevitable” that he himself had tweeted about having heard of the ED’s impending raid at his Kurla residence two months prior to his arrest while also claiming that he was ready to “welcome them wholeheartedly with tea and cookies”.

Seven other MVA leaders have been probed by the ED in 2021 alone. In July 2021, the ED attached a sugar mill worth Rs 65 crore in Satara leased to a company related to Deputy CM Ajit Pawar and his wife Sunetra as part of its probe into a money laundering case pertaining to the Maharashtra State Co-operative Bank. In September 2021, Sena leader Anil Parab appeared before the ED in a bribery and money laundering case linked to Deshmukh.

In January 2021, the ED questioned Raut’s wife Varsha in the PMC Bank case over her alleged links with the wife of Pravin Raut whom ED had arrested. During 2019-2020, the ED had four MVA leaders under their scanner, including Sharad Pawar, Praful Patel, Eknath Khadse and Pratap Sarnaik.

Seeking to throw light at the dynamics at play in Maharashtra, Raut said on February 14 this year, “The BJP is repeatedly saying that this person will be in jail and that person will be jail…They are saying that our leaders will be in the company of Anil Deshmukh in jail…I want to tell the BJP that in the next few days, three and a half of its leaders will be in jail. And they will be where Deshmukh is lodged while Deshmukh will be out.”

A day later, while addressing a press conference at the Sena headquarters,

Raut alleged that Neil Somaiya, son of BJP leader Kirit Somaiya, had links with Rakesh Wadhwan, a PMC bank fraud accused. A know Sena-baiter Kirit had earlier made allegations that Thackerays own benami properties in Raigad. Raut said in the PMC case he will submit all the documents to the CM for appropriate action, demanding the arrest of Neil and Kirit. Suspecting Raut will follow through, Neil approached the court seeking anticipatory bail against his arrest. The plea was denied as there was no FIR registered against him.

Later, on March 8, Raut alleged that some ED officials in Mumbai were running an extortion racket with the help of middlemen, and that the city police had been probing into a complaint in the case. Its Economic Offences Wing has sent notices to several companies in this regard.

A security establishment officer says the past two years have been “chaotic” in Maharashtra, which has not seen different governments at the state and central levels for more than a decade.

“Between 2009 and 2014 there was a Congress-NCP government in the state and UPA II at the Centre. Then we had a BJP-led government both in the state and at the Centre from 2014 to 2019. It has only been over two years now that there are different governments again,” the official said. “What makes it worse is that their ruling parties don’t see eye-to-eye, making it worse for officers working in investigating agencies who have to do a tight rope walk to ensure they are not labelled as having affiliation to any particular political party and pay a price for it later.”

A senior IPS officer in Mumbai, on condition of anonymity, admitted that the rivalry between the MVA and the BJP and their use of police and central agencies against each other are taking a toll on the morale of officers. “It further hurts when the cases from either side don’t sustain in the courts,” he said.