Ajit Pawar

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Allegations against

2000-14

Nov 24, 2019: The Times of India

As deputy chief minister in the erstwhile Congress-NCP government between 2000 and 2014, Ajit Pawar was one of the most powerful politicians in the state. That was until questions were raised over his alleged role in the Rs 70,000 crore irrigation scam following a series of TOI exposes in 2012. Costs were inflated and irrigation projects awarded to select dam contractors, it was alleged.

As water resources minister, Pawar was accused of granting project approvals totalling Rs 20,000 crore during an eight-month period in 2009 without the mandatory clearance of the governing council of Vidarbha Irrigation Development Corporation. On the day TOI reported it in September 2012, Pawar resigned as the state’s deputy chief minister over corruption charges against him.

TOI also exposed his alleged role in diverting water meant for irrigation to industries. Between 2003 and 2011 as water resources minister and finance minister, Pawar chaired or partook in a highpowered committee that diverted 2,000 million cubic metre of water meant for irrigation to industries. The large-scale redirection from 51 dams reduced the state’s irrigation potential by around four lakh hectares — an area about nine times the size of Greater Mumbai.

In 2013, Pawar was forced to apologise when he reportedly ridiculed the acute water shortage in the state by mocking a farmer on hunger strike who demanded water. Soon after the BJP-led Devendra Fadnavis government came to power in the state in late 2014, it ordered an anti-corruption bureau inquiry into the irrigation scam. Among the politicians against whom the inquiry was ordered were Pawar and Sunil Tatkare, the two former NCP ministers who headed the water resources department.

The slow pace of investigation prompted the Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court in July 2018 to call the BJP-led government’s probe into the scam a “mere eyewash”. In November 2018, the ACB, for the first time, mentioned Pawar’s “lapses” in the alleged scam. An affidavit submitted to the Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court, said Pawar as the minister who looked after the water resources department, was responsible for “all business and disposal thereof appertaining to his department”.

This September, the Enforcement Directorate initiated a money laundering probe against Ajit Pawar and officials of Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank over an alleged Rs 25,000 crore loan fraud.