Taking a dig at Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Senior Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar suggested on Tuesday him to sprinkle cow urine on the tainted ministers in his cabinet, making them sit in front of Lord Shiva’s idol for their purification, if he cannot sack them.
“If you (the chief minister) do not want to remove tainted ministers from their posts, there is no problem in sprinkling gomutra (cow urine) of a holy cow on them. Do abhishek (ceremonial sprinkling) on them after making them sit in front of Lord Shiva’s feet and purify them. After that, people can be told that they have been purified. They were impure because of their statements about honey traps and farmers. After abhishek with cow urine, the government can declare them as purified,” Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar said.
“The deadline for the resignation of Agriculture Minister Manikrao Kokate is ending today. Chhawa Sanghatana president Vijaykumar Ghadge Patil has informed that if a decision is not taken regarding the resignation of Kokate, the Chhawa Sanghatana will take farmers across the state and launch a protest,” Wadettiwar said in Nagpur.
Meanwhile in Mumbai, Fadnavis gave a stern warning to his ministers after a cabinet meeting. At an internal meeting that lasted for 20 minutes, he expressed strong displeasure with controversial statements and irregularities by his ministers. He warned that if such things continue, action will be taken against them.
“This is the last chance. The government’s work must not be hampered. If such things continue to happen, the government will be greatly discredited. We will take whatever action we want,” Fadnavis told his ministers.
In a related development, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, who was widely expected to demand Manikrao Kokate’s resignation on Tuesday, softened his stand making it clear that action will be taken against his Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) ministers only if action is also taken against Deputy Chief Minister Eknath-led Shiv Sena’s tainted ministers.
However, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar pulled up the agriculture minister who was caught playing an online rummy game on his mobile phone in the legislative assembly and had also called the Maharashtra government “a beggar” a few days ago.
Kokate met Deputy CM Ajit Pawar at the Mantralaya on Tuesday morning and had a discussion for 25 minutes in Ajit’s ante-chamber. It was learnt that the outcome of this discussion was that the deputy CM pulled him up. During the meeting in the ante-chamber, Ajit Pawar told him, “Kokate, the government is being defamed because of you. We should be careful while speaking”.
After this, Manikrao Kokate apologised to Ajit Pawar for the incident and assured him that such things would not happen in the future.
For a while, it looked like Kokate would be asked to resign, until Pawar made it clear later that action against Kokate would depend on whether action would be taken against tainted ministers from the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena.