Mumbai: Deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar is increasingly becoming an embarrassment to the ruling Maha Yuti coalition. The Pune Porschegate has been grabbing national headlines for the past several days and what is becoming clear is the fact that the NCP led by Ajit Pawar had placed pressure on the Pune police to take the minor, who fatally knocked dead two engineers on May 19, off the hook.
Local MLA Sunil Tingre, who was at the police station along with Vishal Agarwal, father of the minor and a big builder, till 6.30 a.m. putting pressure on the cops. The BJP wants the MLA to be criminally prosecuted, but that is not happening because he is close to Ajit Pawar. Ajit Pawar, who is the guardian minister of Pune, himself is reported to have called the police with regard to the accident.
Till date Pawar has not been able to prove that his party did not interfere with the investigation. Deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, who is in charge of the home portfolio, is not able to do much since Ajit Pawar is an important partner of the Maha Yuti coalition. With every passing day, the ineptness and corruption of the Pune police is getting exposed. The minor and his father and grandfather made a perfece nonsense of the police system.
First it was the plying of the minor accused at the Yerwada police station with pizzas and burgers on the fateful night. The second was the destruction of the blood sample of the minor and its replacement with the blood of his mother. And third is the failure of the cops to trace the minor's mother Shivani Agarwal who gave her blood sample for being substituted with that of her son.
Pune police commissioner Amitesh Gupta appeared to be a pathetic figure on national television since he was unable to answer most of the questions thrown at him. He is not being shunted out because of resistance from Ajit Pawar. The opposition is slamming Fadnavis on a daily basis for the gross mishandling of Porschegate by the police, but he is unable to effectively defend himself because of the Ajit Pawar factor. Incidentally, Ajit Pawar was also absent at some of the Maha Yuti rallies during the Lok Sabha election campaign.
That cracks have appeared in the Maha Yuti is again evidenced by the fact that senior NCP leader and cabinet minister Chhagan Bhujbal came out openly in defence of Jitendra Awhad of the NCP (Sharad Pawar) who tore a poster of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar recently.
A senior BJP leader told FPJ that the "picture will become clear on June 4 when the election results will be out. The formation of a BJP government at the centre for the third time will strengthen Fadnavis' hand to deal with the likes of Ajit Pawar."
