New Delhi:
Ajit Pawar, the Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra, has been accused of sanctioning a deal that reeks of a conflict of interest.
In the Maharashtra Assembly on Wednesday, the BJP provided documents that show that between 2007 and 2008 when Mr Pawar was Irrigation Minister, his department leased a whopping 17,700 square metres of land to a company to which he was closely linked - he held 8,800 of 25,000 shares.
Mr Pawar said that he bought and sold the shares in AG Mercantile Private Limited in 2005 - much before the lease was signed.
But the BJP pointed out that till 2009, he was listed as a stakeholder in the company on the website for the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.
Mr Pawar's partymen offered this explanation: "Ajit Pawar informed the house that he bought and sold the shares. It is the company's job to update the MCA website", said Jitendra Awhad, an MLA from Mr Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
But there's also another point of embarrassment for Mr Pawar - on the board of directors for AG Mercantile is Vinod Goenka, who went to jail on Wednesday for the 2G spectrum scam. Mr Goenka co-owned Swan Telecom - a company that was allegedly one of the chief beneficiaries of the criminal conspiracy conceived and executed by former Telecom Minister A Raja, who is also in jail, along with Mr Goenka's business partner, Shahid Balwa.
Mr Pawar has said in his defence that Mr Goenka joined the board in 2009 - by which time he had ended his association with AG Mercantile. But the degrees of separation are fine enough to give his critics the ammunition they are looking for.