The Maharashtra home minister did not deny that the NCP chief and his wife flew on a private aircraft with the 2G scam accused to Dubai on February 8, 2011.
Maharashtra home minister RR Patil admitted in the state assembly on Thursday that Nationalist Congress Party chief and Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar may have been acquainted with Mumbai builder Shahid Usman Balwa, who is now under arrest in connection with the telecom spectrum allocation scandal, popularly known as the 2G scam.
Patil was replying to allegations levelled by leader of the opposition Eknath Khadse of the Bharatiya Janata Party about Pawar's links with Balwa. The debate stretched late into the night. Patil did not deny that Pawar and his wife flew on a private aircraft with Balwa to Dubai on February 8, 2011.
The home minister said politicians meet numerous people in the course of their work but that does not mean all of them are their friends or business partners. Khadse had claimed that Balwa owned the eight-seater aircraft on which the Pawars flew.
Patil made counter allegations by producing a list of the trips made by Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray and BJP leaders, including Gopinath Munde, Kirit Somaiyya, M Venkaiah Naidu and Khadse himself, in Balwa’s aircraft.
Patil said Thackeray did not even pay for the use of the aircraft. "We don't deny having used an aircraft owned by Balwa, but we paid the rent from time to time. But the Shiv Sena working president did not even bother to pay for the use while the BJP made the payment only after Balwa was arrested in February."
Meanwhile, Khadse corrected himself and said it was not Balwa's business partner Vinod Goenka but the latter's brother who was a friend of gangster Dawood Ibrahim.
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