Pointing to the state government’s decision to roll back the transfer of 10 senior police officials days after they were announced, Leader of the Opposition Devendra Fadnavis said this exposed the trust deficit in the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government.
He was speaking in Thane on Monday. On Sunday, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray revoked the orders regarding the transfer of 10 Deputy Commissioners of Police (DCP) after they were announced on Thursday.
Fadnavis also denied Shiv Sena Rajya Sabha Member of the Parliament (MP) Sanjay Raut’s charge that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was trying to destabilise the MVA government and dismissed it as conjecture. “We are not in a hurry. We will not topple the government, it will fall under the weight of its own contradictions,” he said, adding these claims were made to divert attention from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“My experience suggests that every Commissioner of Police (CP) has an establishment board with the rights to make internal transfers. It is an unwritten convention that the CP discusses these transfers with the Home Minister. The Home Minister is expected to brief the Chief Minister... Here, it seems that the Home Minister may not have briefed the Chief Minister about this,” said Fadnavis, adding that after the transfer orders were issued, it may have come to light that the Chief Minister’s office was not aware of this, leading to the stay.
“This points to not just a lack of coordination, but also a trust deficit,” he charged, adding that this was not proper in the present pandemic situation.
Fadnavis said there was no coordination between the parties, government and the ministers, leading to lack of coordinated decision making. Every minister was trying to assert his authority, leading to a game of one-upmanship, he added.
The former chief minister said the government’s apathy could jeopardise the decision to grant 16 per cent quotas to the dominant Maratha community in jobs and education in Maharashtra. The issue is being heard in the Supreme Court (SC) and is at a critical juncture. He said the Maratha reservation issue was one that went beyond party politics and claimed that the ‘state government must pay more attention to it.’
