Ashok Chavan pleads innocence in Adarsh Society scam

Former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan today pleaded his innocence in the Adarsh Housing Society scam, saying he never cleared any files relating to the project.

"I never went through the files of Adarsh Housing Society between 1999 and 2004. It never came to me during my tenure as chief minister of the state," Chavan, who had to step down in the wake of the controversy, told the state legislative assembly.

"It (the society) had nothing to do with the kin of Kargil heroes and no promises were made to them that they were to be accommodated in the flats," Chavan said participating in a special debate on the scam.

The Society, he said, indeed had plans to allot flats to serving and retired defence personnel for their welfare and there were 21 allotees with services background and three from the family of Kargil heroes.

Maintaining that two of his three relatives who had flats in the Society were from the army and the air force, Chavan said chief minister Prithviraj Chavan should go ahead with a probe into all issues involved.

Chavan described the controversy as "a political conspiracy" and said that the land belonged to the state government but was in possession of defence forces.

Pointing that at the most the Adarsh Society issue could be termed as a case of irregularities but not a scam, he said the coffins scam that took place during the Kargil war when NDA was in power, was much bigger in scale.