Mumbai What do Sanjay Rathod, Abdul Sattar, Dr Vijaykumar Gavit and Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil have in common apart from becoming part of Eknath Shinde’s cabinet on Tuesday?
All three have been embroiled in controversies that have come to the fore again following their elevation.
Sanjay Rathod, the Sena MLA from Yavatmal, was caught in an unsavoury controversy last year after a 22-year TikTok star from Pune died by suicide. A series of audio clips went viral on social media purportedly establishing the minister’s links with the woman.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had then attacked Rathod, questioning his relations with her, and also alleging his involvement in her death. An FIR was filed in the matter, and there was a police probe. The then chief minister Uddhav Thackeray had asked Rathod to resign from his position as the minister for forests. Maharashtra BJP’s vice-president Chitra Wagh, who had protested against Rathod, and had been instrumental in the police filing the FIR against him expressed her disillusionment over his induction in the cabinet. “Though he has become a minister, my fight against him will continue. I have full faith in judiciary and I shall fight to win,” she issued a statement on video on Tuesday. Though they were not embroiled in any controversy when they joined the MVA government, three other ministers, Nawab Malik, Anil Parab and Anil Deshmukh are since being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate. Other MVA ministers who have faced probes included Ashok Chavan and Chhagan Bhujbal.
Abdul Sattar, an MLA from Sillod, who defected to Shinde’s camp, found himself in the news on the eve of the cabinet expansion. His four children were found to be among the 7,880 candidates debarred by the state education department from reappearing for the teacher eligibility test (TET) for alleged malpractices.
The names of Huma Farheen Abdul Sattar Shaikh, Heena Kausar Abdul Sattar Shaikh, Uzma Nahid Abdul Sattar Shaikh, and Mohammad Aamir Abdul Sattar were mentioned in a notification issued in this regard by the Maharashtra State Council of Examinations (MSCE) on August 3. They have been charged with allegedly procuring fake certificates showing they had cleared the exam held on 19 January 2020. However Sattar, who jumped ship from the Congress to the Shiv Sena in 2019, has denied any wrongdoing on his children’s part and has asked the state government to probe how the names of his children have been mentioned in the list.
Dr Vijaykumar Gavit, a former professor of medicine, and an MLA from Nandurbar, was the minister for tribal development in 2009 when Prithviraj Chavan was head of the Congress-NCP government. In 2014, he jumped parties and joined the BJP. A high-level probe conducted by Justice M.G. Gaikwad (Retired) in 2017, indicted Gavit for corruption and irregularities in the working of the tribal development department. The panel had been set up on the orders of the Bombay High Court (HC), which was hearing a PIL about alleged irregularities in the tribal development department and the tribal development corporation.
Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, another BJP leader inducted in the cabinet, was under fire about a decade ago for the non-payment of dues to the state-run Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Corporation Limited (MSEDCL). The Mula Pravara Electrical Cooperative Society (MPECL), under the control of Vikhe-Patil family until a few years ago, owes ₹2,396 crore towards power purchase. The MSEDCL has now taken over the MPECL, but the dues are yet to be cleared and litigation is underway at a district court and appellate tribunal.