Union Power Minister and former Maharashtra chief minister Sushil Kumar Shinde on Monday deposed before a two-member judicial commission stated that the letter of intent clearing the construction of the controversial Adarsh Housing Society scam building was signed during his predecessor’s tenure.
This submission by Shinde has thrown the ball of allegations into former chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s court. This week Union Minister for Science and Technology Deshmukh and another former chief minister Ashok Chavan will be making their submissions before the commission.
Shinde’s name cropped up during the post-scam investigation following allegations that several files pertaining to the allotment of contentious plot of land on which 31-storey high-rise was constructed were cleared during his tenure.
However, the former Maharashtra chief minister stressed the fact that he took over as chief minister late in the night while “the file was cleared early in the morning.
Moreover, it was the duty of the department concerned to inform me about the clearing of the files.”
Published 25 June 2012, 06:16 IST