Cornering Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) for yet another time, over the corruption allegations, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led State government on Wednesday accused the party of using the scam money from Loksahahir Annabhau Sathe Development Corporation (LASDC) for its election funding.
Discussing Rs 550 crore scam in the LASDC through the attention motion called by BJP MLA Anil Gote, minister of state for social justice Dilip Kamble informed the Assembly that the report of the CID inquiry has exposed the scam in the corporation in the year between August 2012 to December 2014. NCP MLA Ramesh Kadam was the president of the LASDC then, who is currently under arrest over the allegations of corruption.
“The corporation has witnessed the scam of Rs 550 crore in this period. Around 59 vehicles were gifted to political leaders,” said Mr Kamble. Following his reply, MLAs from BJP and Shiv Sena demanded to announce the names of the beneficiaries, to which Mr Kamble said that the list includes 10 district presidents of the NCP and several office bearers.
Answering to questions raised by Mr Gote as to who was benefited from the scam, Mr Kamble said that all the beneficiaries are from the NCP. “The money was used by the party to fund the elections,” he said.
Mr Kamble’s allegations led to uproar from the NCP side. Party MLA Shashikant Shinde raised an objection to the reply saying the minister may inquire any person he wants. “But he should not make it a political game by targeting a particular party inside the house,” he said.
It led to chaos inside the house as BJP and NCP MLAs started shouting slogans, bringing the proceedings of the house to standstill. The assembly had to be adjourned for 10 minutes following the uproar.
After the house resumed, the BJP MLAs continued with their demands to declare names of the beneficiaries. However the minister did not disclose any names from the NCP’s side, but said that Rs 106 crore have been deposited in the bank account of a builder called Vimal Shah.
According to the minister’s reply in the house, Rs 150.78 crore was disbursed illegally from the corporation to the organisations related to NCP MLA Ramesh Kadam. Around 65 luxury vehicles have been distributed to beneficiaries by violating rules. Out of these 51 had been confiscated by the CID, but 25 have been returned to the beneficiaries as per the court order and rest are lying with the probing agency.
The government has also sent show cause notices to 81 officers who were recruited by violating rules.
