JOIN USMVA has no right to stay in power: BJP
After fresh allegations of extortion demands by Maharashtra ministers, BJP on Thursday piled up pressure on the Shiv Sena-led MVA coalition saying it had no right to remain in power.
The fierce attack from the BJP came a day after suspended Mumbai police officer Sachin Vaze claimed in a letter that the then Home Minister Anil Deshmukh had demanded Rs 2 crore from him to let him continue in the city police. Another minister Anil Parab had asked him to collect money from illegal gutka sellers and government contractors, he claimed. Parab has dismissed Vaze's charges.
“It is not the Maha Vikas Aghadi government but a Maha Vasooli Aghadi with a common minimum programme to collect money through the police,” senior BJP leader and Union Minister Prakash Javadekar told reporters at the BJP headquarters.
Seeking to link Vaze with the Shiv Sena, Javadekar said both Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Shiv Sena spokesman Sanjay Raut had hailed him as a “promising and capable” officer who was being harmed.
Javadekar claimed that the Sena leaders had put up a strong defence of Vaze as they feared that the suspended police officer might spill the secrets of the MVA government.
“The entire Sachin Vaze and Home Minister controversy show the character of the ruling alliance in Maharashtra. They have no right to remain in power and we demand their resignation,” he said.
After Deshmukh's resignation as Home Minister on Monday, senior BJP leader B L Santosh termed it as the beginning of the fall of the “unholy, anti-people alliance government”.
On Thursday, Javadekar reminded Shiv Sena that it had won the assembly elections with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as their poll mascot and betrayed the mandate to join hands with the Congress and NCP.
The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a plea by the Maharashtra government against the Bombay High Court order for a CBI inquiry into the allegations of corruption levelled by former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh against Deshmukh.