Anil Deshmukh’s resignation a ‘mistake’, Nawab Malik won’t resign: Sanjay Raut

Former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh resigned in April last year after the Bombay high court’s directions to CBI to probe allegations against him of running an extortion racket in Mumbai. Minister Nawab Malik is in jail in an alleged money laundering case.

NAGPUR: Shiv Sena spokesman and Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Raut on Tuesday said that it was a big “mistake” on the part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government to seek resignation from the then Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh and asserted that minister Nawab Malik, who is now in jail, will not resign.

Shiv Sena spokesman and Rajya Sabha member Sanjya Raut said that Anil Deshmukh’s resignation was ‘unjust’ and asserted that Nawab Malik won’t resign. (File)

Deshmukh resigned in April last year after the Bombay high court’s directions to the central bureau of investigation (CBI) to probe allegations against him of running an extortion racket in Mumbai. Malik is in jail in an alleged money laundering case.

Talking to media persons, Raut, who is on a three-day Vidarbha tour, said that they have checked all the charges levelled against Deshmukh and came to the conclusion that his resignation was unjust and it was taken in haste.

“We could have avoided it (Deshmukh’s resignation),” he said and asserted that Nawab Malik will not resign. The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been seeking Malik’s resignation for his alleged nexus with the Mumbai bomb blast kingpin, Dawood Ibrahim. The MVA government, led by chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, has also stuck to its stand on not making Malik resign from the ministry.

However, in a bid to silence the opposition, it has decided to temporarily hand over Malik’s departments to other party ministers. With this arrangement, Malik will continue to be a minister in the Thackeray-led cabinet as a minister without any portfolio.

Raut alleged that the central investigation agencies were behaving like political activists. “As many as 23,000 raids and searches were carried out by the enforcement directorate (ED) and CBI during the past seven years when the BJP-led government took reigns. Of them, most of the raids were conducted in non-BJP states, and particularly against the BJP’s opponents to silence them,” Raut said and added that even he, who belongs to a middle-class family, was not spared because of his utterances against the policies and agenda of the Modi government.

The Rajya Sabha member said he had submitted a 13-page complaint against ED and other central agencies to the Prime Minister and was waiting for action. The Maharashtra Police too have simultaneously started investigating cases against ED and other central agency officials and very soon ‘you’ will come to know the results, he added.

Outrightly rejecting the offer from All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) to support the MVA government, Raut said there is no question of accepting the offer of AIMIM through its leader, Aurangabad Lok Sabha member Imtiaz Jaleel. “We are not going to succumb to any such tactics. It’s a BJP ploy,” Raut said. Aurangabad MP Jaleel on Saturday said his party (AIMIM) has given an offer to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) that it would join the MVA in order to defeat the BJP in Maharashtra.