I was offered Rs 70 cr to keep mum: Tawde

Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader, Vinod Tawde, has alleged that two Cabinet ministers close to former chief minister, Ashok Chavan, offered him Rs70 crore to keep mum on the Renuka Society case.

Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader, Vinod Tawde, has alleged that two Cabinet ministers close to former chief minister, Ashok Chavan, offered him Rs70 crore to keep mum on the Renuka Society case.

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“Two senior cabinet ministers close to Chavan approached me and offered me an amount of Rs70 crore to keep mum on the Renuka Cooperative Housing Society issue,” Tawde said while speaking at a party function in Dhule on Wednesday.

Tawde was hesitant to name the ministers, who had approached him. “I will make the names of people, who have offered me money, to any committee appointed to look into this scam,” Tawde told the Hindustan Times on Thursday.

Last year, Tawde had alleged that a plot in the Government Colony at Bandra (East), reserved for housing families displaced by infrastructure projects, was cut into five segments and allotted to Renuka Cooperative Housing Society. Tawde had alleged that the 10,000-sq-ft plot with a market value of Rs100 crore was offered to society for Rs 95 lakh.

The society was floated by DP Sawant, a member of Legislative Assembly from Nanded, who is now a minister in chief minister Prithviraj Chavan’s team and had several officials from the chief minister’s office and Mantralaya as members.

Tawde had raked up the issue after the Adarsh scam broke out. Renuka housing society was allotted the land in 2004.