Who is Maharashtra minister Manikrao Kokate, earlier caught in ‘rummy row’ and now convicted in forgery case?

In indications that the NCP and the government are headed for fresh trouble, Kokate, after being divested of the Sports and Minority Affairs portfolios on Wednesday, resigned from the state cabinet Thursday while his Assembly membership stands jeopardised.

Kokate was earlier with the undivided Shiv Sena, before joining the Congress and eventually Ajit Pawar’s NCP during the party’s split in 2023. After the Mahayuti’s victory in 2024, he was made a minister and held the key Agriculture portfolio.

His tenure as Agriculture Minister was marred with controversy. In February, at a meeting in Amravati, Kokate while referring to the Rs 1 crop insurance scheme said, “Even beggars do not accept one rupee in alms but the government is giving crop insurance at this price, and even this is being misused.”

Subsequently, the scheme came under scrutiny with officials saying more than four lakh applications were rejected due to irregularities. The minister too admitted that some applicants had falsely shown non-agricultural land as farmlands but claimed the government had incurred no losses as no claims were disbursed on the rejected applications.

Despite the controversy, Kokate insisted the scheme would not be scrapped. “The applications may have been turned down due to some erroneous entries but the scheme has been beneficial overall. Unfortunately, it was turned into a scam by certain elements,” he had said.

In April, Kokate yet again drew the ire of farmers after he deliberately accused them of defaulting on crop loans in anticipation of waivers. “You take loans and then default for five to ten years expecting them to be waived. Farmers are not investing in their lands,” he had said.

Three months later, he found himself in the middle of another row after a video shared by NCP(SP) MLA Rohit Pawar purportedly showed Kokate playing an online card game inside the Legislative Council.

Denying the allegations, Kokate said he was not playing rummy. “I was trying to watch YouTube to find out what was happening in the Assembly. Someone had downloaded the game on the phone and I was just trying to skip it,” he had said.

His explanation did little to calm the criticism and on August 1, Kokate was stripped off the Agriculture portfolio and given the Sports department.

What is the case he is convicted in?

The case, filed based on the complaint of former minister Tukaram Dighole, dates back to 1995. Dighole accused Kokate and his brother Sunil of forging documents to obtain two flats in the Nirman View Apartments on College Road in Yeolekar Mala in Nashik.

In February this year, a Nashik district court sentenced Manikrao Kokate to two years’ imprisonment in a nearly 30-year-old case involving forgery and fraud linked to the illegal allotment of flats under the chief minister’s discretionary quota. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on Kokate. His brother Sunil Kokate was similarly convicted.

Dighole, a three-time MLA and former Congress leader, was defeated by Kokate in the 1999 Assembly elections, when Kokate won his first term as an MLA. Dighole died in 2019.

According to the prosecution, the Kokate brothers falsely claimed that they belonged to the low income group and did not own any other property, enabling them to secure flats under the 10%discretionary housing quota of the CM. Investigators later found that the documents submitted in support of their application were forged.

Kokate challenged the conviction, but the sessions court upheld the district court’s verdict, while setting aside the order directing him to hand over the flat to the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA). He has appealed against the verdict in the Bombay High Court.