A day after the Maharashtra cabinet rejected the report of the Adarsh Commission of Enquiry, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan admitted that the scam and its fallout over the last three years, had been a “difficult and unhappy episode.”
He was talking to journalists here on Saturday. Asked whether the report would hurt the image of the Congress ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha polls, he said, “I do not know how this will play out. It is difficult to say how much damage it will do or how deeply it will impact the party.”
The Congress-NCP government has come under severe criticism for rejecting the report. However, Mr Chavan said, “This was the decision of the Cabinet and the government was bound by the decision.” He said he was keen to table the report in the recent Assembly session in keeping with the assurance the government had given before the Bombay High Court.
Mr. Chavan said Governor K Sankaranarayan’s decision to decline the CBI’s request to prosecute the former Chief Minister Ashok Chavan was taken independently, not after consulting the Cabinet. “I was not aware of the decision. The Cabinet did not advise the Governor on this but I believe he did take legal advice,” he said.
The Chief Minister said much of the contents of the report were already in the public domain, barring the language. “Much of what happened was already in the public domain through the Right to Information and the media. Issues like not taking environmental clearance and receiving flats after handling the file. The only thing was the language used in the report. Some people also felt that the report was soft on some people,” he said.
Mr Chavan said the government had deliberately decided not to produce Marathi translations of the report to preserve secrecy. “The contents of the report had been shared only with a few people. We felt translating it would result in a leak and took the permission of the House,” he said.
He said the State would take steps to prevent such scams from recurring. Asked to comment on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership, Mr Chavan said “Mr Modi’s style of functioning is autocratic. The question is whether he will be able to run a coalition government if there is a fractured verdict.”