MVA demands CM Shinde's resignation for 'land-scam taint'

Nagpur, Dec 20 (IANS) The Maharashtra Legislature witnessed noisy scenes on Tuesday as the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) accused Chief Minister Eknath Shinde of alleged corruption and demanded his resignation forthwith.

Top leaders like Shiv Sena-UBT President Uddhav Thackeray, Congress President Nana Patole, Nationalist Congress Party state President Jayant Patole, Leaders of Opposition Ajit Pawar (Assembly) and Ambadas Danve (Council) and others joined the chorus asking Shinde to step down.

They pointed out that when Shinde was the Urban Development Minister, he had handed over a prime plot of land in Nagpur, worth around Rs 100 crore, meant for housing poor and slum-dwellers, to some builders at a throwaway rate of barely Rs 2 crore.

The matter assumed sudden significance after the Bombay High Court ordered a status quo on the project, the MVA said, as various leaders and legislators demonstrated on the steps of the legislature and raised slogans.

"The CM has no right to continue for even a minute and must quit immediately. How can he stay in office when there is such a huge land-scam? During the MVA government, the then ministers like Anil Deshmukh and Sanjay Rathore had quit as soon as the allegations were levelled," said Patole.

In a big setback, the HC questioned Shinde's order (when he was the minister concerned in the erstwhile MVA regime), directing the Nagpur Improvement Trust to hand over nearly five acres of the land in April 2021 to 16 private builders, although the matter was sub-judice.

Directing the state government to file its reply and maintain a status quo, the court will hear the matter further on January 4.

Earlier on Tuesday, the MVA leaders including Congress Legislature Party Leader Balasaheb Thorat, Ashok Chavan, Prithviraj Chavan, ChhaganA Bhujbal, Dilip Walse-Patil, Aditya Thackeray, Anil Parab and more had met to hammer out a common strategy on the issue.

For the second day, the legislature premises reverberated with slogans of '50 khokhe, Absolutely Ok' (a slang for Rs 50 crore) which has embarrassed the ruling combine for the past six months, slamming the Bharatiya Janata Party for insulting state's icons, and expressing solidarity with the Marathi-speaking people on the Maharashtra-Karnataka border villages.