IAS Sanjeev Jaiswal, who has recently been transferred from the post of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) additional commissioner to the Managing Director of Maharashtra State Fisheries Development Corporation, has written an explosive letter to Maharashtra Chief Minsiter Uddhav Thackeray. Jaiswal has alleged that Sanjay Ghadigaonkar, former corporator from Thane, has been harassing him mentally. He has also allleged that Ghadigaonkar is a member of the "Golden Gang", who had started "an era of blackmailing and extortion in Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) with the support of the police".
Jaiswal said Ghadigaonkar's enmity and hostility against him started when he disqualified him as a corporator of Indian National Congress (INC) party from the TMC after his bogus caste certificate was set aside by the Caste Scrutiny Committee. Ghadigaonkar filed an appeal against it in the High Court and Supreme Court, however, his appeal was dismissed, said Jaiswal.
"Since then he has had a grudge against we for not only disqualifying him but also for barring him from contesting elections for 6 years as per the legal provisions. Subsequently he tried contesting the 2019 elections of the Municipal Corporation on a BJP ticket but the Returning Officer for the Elections declared his nomination paper as invalid on the ground that he is a disqualified corporator who has been barred from contesting elections for 6 years as per the law. As his political career was finished it was but natural that he held me responsible for this and since then he has been trying to level false complaints against me and going to all levels to malign my image," Jaiswal wrote in the letter.
Apart from calling him a member of the "Golden Gang", Jaiswal has also alleged that Ghadigaonkar is also a "RTI blackmailer". "A big racket of RTI blackmailers based on a complaint of the sitting MLA Pratap Sarnaik was exposed in the TMC and in my report submitted to the police, one of the names of this RTI blackmailers is of Sanjay Ghadigaonkar," said Jaiswal.
Jaiswal said the reason for his letter to Uddhav is "not because I am afraid of his complaints but to bring to your kind notice as to how this Sanjay Ghadigaonkar has been harassing me mentally both during my tenure as MC and even after that". "I am fully aware that I am still under threats and after this letter my life would come more under threat but I thought it's high time that I should bring all this on record so that I can get some justice and respite from these repeated bogus, frivolous and mentally disturbing complaints," Jaiswal further said.
