Maharashtra Sports Minister Manikrao Kokate Resigns After Court Issues Arrest Warrant

Mumbai: Maharashtra Sports Minister and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Manikrao Kokate resigned on Wednesday evening after a Nashik court issued an arrest warrant against him, sharply escalating his legal and political troubles.

In fast-moving developments, Maharashtra Governor Acharya Devvrat accepted Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’s recommendation to allocate the Sports and Youth Affairs portfolio to Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, leaving Kokate a minister without a portfolio.

Following the court ruling, Fadnavis spoke to Pawar and sought clarity on who could be inducted into the Cabinet in Kokate’s place, signalling that the government is preparing for a possible reshuffle, sources said. Kokate, a senior NCP leader headed by Ajit Pawar, has been convicted by a Nashik court and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in a 1995 cheating and forgery case linked to the illegal allotment of flats under a state government housing scheme.

Meanwhile, NCP state president Sunil Tatkare said in New Delhi that he would meet Pawar in Mumbai on Thursday to discuss the political and legal fallout of Kokate’s conviction. “We follow the law and the Constitution,” Tatkare said, without elaborating. Earlier in the day, Kokate approached the Bombay High Court challenging the sessions court order that upheld his conviction and two-year jail sentence in the nearly threedecade-old case.

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