Big Story – Page 19 – The Metrognome

Governor accepts deputy CM’s resignation; Pawar’s portfolios handed to Jayant Patil and Rajesh Tope

by The Editors/ editor@themetrognome.in

Five days after Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar resigned from his post, following reports of an alleged irrigation scam in the state. Chief Minister Prithviraj Chauhan accepted the resignation, followed by state governor, His Excellency K Sankaranarayan, at Raj Bhavan today.

As per a release from Raj Bhavan, the Governor also agreed to Chavan’s request that the Finance and Planning (additional charge) portfolio be handed over to Jayant Patil (the current Minister for Rural Development), who had held this portfolio in the Vilasrao Deshmukh government, and that the additional charge of the Department of Energy be given to Rajesh Tope, who is currently the Minister for Higher and Technical Education.

A day prior to this meeting, NCP chief Sharad Pawar had also accepted his nephew Ajit’s resignation, while reiterating that there was “no rift within the Pawar family.” The resignations of other NCP leaders have been rejected thus far.

Did Aseem Trivedi issue threats?

Complainant Hanumant Upre alleges that cartoonist called him on his mobile phone and threatened him to withdraw the complaint made against him

By The Editors/ editor@themetrognome.in

The Aseem Trivedi case refuses to die down. Just days after the jailed cartoonist was released from judicial custody, the complainant in the case that brought the spotlight on the cartoons Aseem had posted on a website last year, Hanumant Upre, has alleged that the former threatened him to withdraw the case.

Hanumant is a social activist who heads the Maharashtra state unit of the Satyashodhak OBC Parishad. He had registered a criminal complaint against Aseem at Beed police station on December 26, 2011, but the cartoonist was arrested only in September this year, following a complaint registered at Bandra Kurla police station. According to a complaint Hanumant filed before Beed’s superintendent of police on September 24, the activist has alleged that Aseem called him on his mobile phone on September 17 and threatened him to withdraw the complaint.

The complaint reads, ‘Shri Trivedi personally spoke to me on my mobile bearing no. 9________ on 17/09/2012 for about 20 minutes during the period between 11.25 am to 11.45 am within few days of his release on bail by the Hon’ble Bombay High Court. Shri Aseem Trivedi initially tried to persuade me to withdraw the complaint; however I refused to do so. Shri Trivedi went on giving threats and exerted pressures to withdraw the complaint lodged against him stating that nothing would turn as a result of the complaint the Hon’ble High Court of Bombay had already released by giving clean chit. I did not budge or succumb to the pressure exerted by him.’

However, Alok Dixit, Aseem’s friend and fellow campaigner in Trivedi’s NGO Save Your Voice, has said that Aseem has never contacted Hanumant on the number that the latter has provided in his written complaint. A local TV channel, meanwhile, flashed the phone number and Alok said that he had received several threatening calls on that number.