Delegation including MLAs and MLCs meet state BJP president Raosaheb Danve in support of revenue minister
Revenue minister Eknath Khadse, who is isolated within the party and also in the government, has started putting pressure on the party. On Wednesday, Khadse loyalists met BJP state unit president Raosaheb Danve in Mumbai and offered to resign as Jalgaon corporators. However, Danve has reiterated that the party's state unit firmly stands behind the minister.
Khadse is under fire with a series of allegations against him which include a land scam and a phone call to him from underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. Khadse has refuted all the allegations and had even skipped the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, choosing to be in his hometown Muktainagar.
Sources close to Khadse say that he would come to Mumbai on Thursday since chief minister Devendra Fadnavis also was out of town. Khadse did not want to speak to the media when Fadnavis was outside Mumbai.
The Khadse loyalists who met Danve in the BJP state unit headquarters at Nariman Point included MLC Smita Wag, MLAs from and around Jalgaon Haribhau Jawale, Suresh Bhole (Rajumama Bhole), district president Uday Wagh, MP AT Nana Patil and a few local leaders. However, both these leaders and Danve denied that the meeting was to do anything with Khadse.
While Jawale and Wagh informed that they met Danve to chalk out programmes for celebrations of two years of the PM Narendra Modi government, Danve told reporters that he had asked the district and city unit BJP presidents of Jalgaon to give reports so that organisational bodies can be set up.
When asked whether Jalgaon corporators have offered to resign since the party's state unit has deserted Khadse, Danve said that he has time and again made it clear that BJP stands by Khadse. He also said that the minister skipped the Cabinet meeting because Sant Muktai's death anniversary is a big event in Muktainagar and Khadse has never been absent from this programme. It was Khadse who was instrumental in changing the name of erstwhile Edlabad as Muktainagar, given after Saint Muktabai, the sister of Sant Dnyaneshwar.
Meanwhile, Congress state unit spokesperson Sachin Savant on Wednesday demanded that governor Ch. Vidyasagar Rao should exercise constitutional powers to sack Eknath Khadse since he has breached the oath he took while assuming office as a minister. Savant has sent a letter to governor Rao and has pointed out that Khadse got the information of land as a minister and passed it on to his family members for purchasing it, which is clearly a breach of oath that seeks maintaining confidentiality.
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