Accept Ajit resignation, Sharad Pawar tells Maha CM Chavan

The stalemate over Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar's resignation ended on Friday with NCP chief Sharad Pawar asking Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan to accept it.

After the crucial meeting of the NCP legislature party here, Sharad said: "I will ask Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan to accept Ajit Pawar's resignation as deputy chief minister".

He said the resignation of all other NCP ministers have been rejected and they would resume their official duties from tomorrow.

Ajit Pawar, 53-year-old nephew of Sharad Pawar, had resigned on Tuesday following media reports about his alleged involvement in a Rs 20,000 crore scam when he held the irrigation portfolio between 1999 and 2009, plunging the 13-year-old Congress-NCP coalition in the state into a crisis.

NCP suspected Chief Minister Chavan had leaked "damaging information" to the media though Congress rubbished the charge, saying in the age of RTI, all information can be easily obtained.

Addressing the media, Pawar senior said the NCP legislators had demanded in the meeting that a white paper on the status of irrigation projects in the state be brought out at the earliest.

The Chief Minister's announcement to publish a white paper on the irrigation projects had angered NCP whose ministers have been holding the irrigation portfolio ever since the coalition came into existence.

Chavan's announcement had followed tabling of the state's Economic Survey in the Legislative Assembly which said only 0.1 per cent of additional land had been brought under irrigation during a decade despite Rs 72,000 crore having been spent.

A meeting of the NCP legislature party had on Wednesday requested Ajit Pawar to withdraw his resignation but the leader remained adamant. However, they had left to Sharad Pawar the final decision on the issue of the resignation of Ajit Pawar and 19 other ministers who had quit on Tuesday to express their solidarity with their leader.

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