Kharge committee probing Mundhwa land deal gets one-month extension

The committee is headed by Additional Chief Secretary Vikas Kharge and was constituted on November 6. Despite repeated attempts to contact him, Kharge was not available for comment.

Activist Vijay Kumbhar criticised the extension, saying: “The day the Kharge Committee was formed in the Mundhwa land scam, I had clearly said it would deliver nothing. This committee was never meant to expose the scam. It was created to mislead the public.”
Kumbhar added, “Those who are supposed to stop these scams ended up creating a mechanism to investigate themselves. And exactly, as I predicted, they have now extended the deadline which is a slow walk to bury the entire case until people forget.”

Opposition parties had on Wednesday expressed doubts over whether the committee would submit its report by the December 7 deadline. “The committee is unlikely to submit its report ahead of the winter session of the state legislature as it would become the main issue during discussion,” said Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar.

Meanwhile, activist Anjali Damania on Thursday said that Digvijay Patil, against whom an FIR has been filed in the Mundhwa land case, has been allowed to travel to Bahrain to attend a family wedding. “Giving permission to go abroad to someone against whom investigation is going on is wrong,” she said.

Damania also demanded that Parth Pawar’s name be included in the FIR. “If this happens, Ajit Pawar will have to resign owning moral responsibility,” she said.