BJP government expected to revoke decision on ACB

DNA: Mumbai: Wednesday, October 29, 2014.

BJP has made it clear that it would do its best to revoke the decision taken by the Congress-NCP government to bring Anti-Corruption Bureau out of the ambit of the Right to Information Act.

Party spokesperson Madhav Bhandari, when contacted, said it was crystal clear that by doing this the Cong-NCP government had wanted to save its ministers facing inquiries by the ACB. He said BJP, once it formed the government, would explore ways and means to bring back ACB under the purview of the RTI law.

It may be recalled here that many of the NCP ministers, including former deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar who was also the finance minister, were in the eye of corruption storm. Pawar had resigned after the then CM, Prithviraj Chavan, alleged that irrigation was negligible even after having spend Rs 70,000 crore, indicating a scam in the escalating prices of irrigation projects.

Subsequently, a committee under water expert Madhavrao Chitale was formed and its report was placed before the government.

Former minister and current NCP state president Sunil Tatkare also faced allegations and after BJP leader Kirit Somaiya filed a case on this in the Bombay high court, ACB had been investigating the charges based on 2,000-page evidence submitted by Somaiya.

Former PWD minister Chhagan Bhujbal is facing allegations and inquiry into an alleged scam in the construction and renovation of Maharashtra Saan in New Delhi.

Another former NCP minister, Gulabrao Deokar, is in jail on corruption charges, while a few other NCP leaders too are facing allegations of corruption.

Vivek Velankar, an RTI activist from Pune and Sajag Nagrik Manch president, said the Congress-NCP Democratic Front government in the state had brought out special branch and the CID out of the ambit of the RTI. He said the real question was what was the need to remove ACB from the ambit of the RTI after nine years of ruling the state and when elections were approaching?

Velankar said the government had done it at the fag end of its tenure to save their ministers facing corruption charges as activists would not be able to bring the information to the public domain once this decision had been implemented. Velankar said activists now expected the new BJP government to revoke this decision.