"Bhujbal is a senior leader and needs to have patience. We will have to demand action against him. I think Bhujbal should resign from the ministry and then raise his demands,” Vikhe-Patil told the media in Kolhapur. (Express photo)
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Chhagan Bhujbal should resign, CM should take a stand on him, says fellow Maharashtra minister Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil
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Maharashtra Revenue Minister Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil of the BJP Wednesday asked his cabinet colleague Chhagan Bhujbal of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) to resign as minister so that he can pursue his demands as an Other Backward Classes (OBC) leader.
“There is an agitation going on for OBC demands. I think it is meaningless and will only create a rift between communities. Bhujbal is a senior leader and needs to have patience. We will have to demand action against him. I think Bhujbal should resign from the ministry and then raise his demands,” Vikhe-Patil told the media in Kolhapur.
Vikhe-Patil said the government has honest intentions about providing reservations to the Maratha community. “But when a member of cabinet takes a different stand, it shows that the government is not speaking in one voice. It raises questions about the government’s credibility. The chief minister will have to take a stand about him,” he said.
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Meanwhile, Opposition leader Vijay Wadettiwar of the Congress took potshots at the government and asked who was stopping it from deciding on the Maratha reservation issue in the cabinet.
“Bhujbal belongs to the ruling party. Instead of raising his demand in the cabinet, he is raising it outside. He is behaving like those who fight in a public chowk…Otherwise, they should put up a ‘mandap’ in a public place and then indulge in a verbal war with one another. Maharashtra will then witness the drama,” said Wadettiwar.
Vikhe-Patil also reacted to former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan’s statement that the NCP brought the downfall of his government in 2014 and said, “Prithviraj Chavan was responsible for the government’s fall. He is responsible for the state in which Congress finds itself. After losing power, Chavan is making all these statements. They are meaningless.”
On Sunday, Chavan claimed that if the NCP had not withdrawn support for his government in Maharashtra in 2014, he would have solved the Maratha reservation issue.
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“I have worked with the cooperative department and had to take some harsh steps. One was the dismissal of the board of directors of Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank. This led to the NCP withdrawing support and the fall of our government. If our government remained in power, I would have solved the problem of the Maratha reservation and ensured it passed the test of law,” he said at an event in Pune.
The Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank’s weak finances had led the Reserve Bank of India to pass strictures. The board of directors, which included NCP leader Ajit Pawar and others, was dismissed. The Congress and the NCP controlled the apex cooperative bank in Maharashtra for a long time. At present, the bank is under a board of administrators.
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