PANAJI
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Pernem MLA, Pravin Arlekar is among a group of six legislators of the saffron party from Maharashtra, Nagaland and Goa, who were targeted by a conman from Gujarat who posed as the PA of the party’s national president J P Nadda, and from whom the latter demanded money in exchange for cabinet berths in their respective States.
Nagpur police arrested Neeraj Singh Rathod from Morbi in Ahmedabad district on charges of cheating by impersonation (section 419 of IPC), cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property (section 420 IPC) and punishment for attempting to commit offences punishable with imprisonment for life (section 511 of IPC).
There is frenzied speculation of cabinet reshuffles in both Maharashtra and Goa for several weeks.
Local Nagpur media reports quoted the police as saying that no money was paid by the MLAs but sources said it is highly unlikely that the police would register offences of cheating under section 420 of IPC if no monetary transaction or transfer occurred.
The media reports said, Rathod made phone calls to Vilas Kumbhare (Central Nagpur), Tekchand Savarkar (Kamptee), Tanaji Mutkule (Hingoli), Narayan Kuche (Badnapur), Basha Mowachang of Nagaland and Arlekar (Pernem, Goa) and offered them ministerships in exchange of lakhs of rupees.
Kumbhare filed a police complaint when he sensed something amiss when Rathod called him and a third man joined the call posing as Nadda himself, asking him (Kumbhare) to foot the catering (food) bill of an RSS event which is to be held in Ahmedabad, the media reports said.
A couple of days later, Kumbhare got a call purportedly from an Ahmedabad caterer asking him to pay Rs 1.7 lakh for the catering bill. It was then that the Nagpur (Central) MLA smelt a rat and approached the police.
While Kumbhare claimed in his complaint that he has not parted with any money, the others are said to have shelled out cash according to another media report which quotes a Nagpur police official.
In Goa, there has been wide speculation that chief minister Pramod Sawant is expected to rejig his cabinet and he himself lent it credibility on Tuesday when at an event in Margao, he confirmed it (reshuffle) will indeed happen without setting any timeline for it.
However, the cabinet reshuffle reports are in the context of having to accommodate a couple of the eight Congress MLAs who defected to the saffron party in September last year and Arlekar is nowhere in the zone of consideration. Efforts to contact Arlekar proved futile as his calls were not being answered.
In Maharashtra too there is talk and buzz of a cabinet reshuffle which gained steam following the Supreme Court’s verdict on matters related to the Shiv Sena split and the dethroning of Uddhav Thackeray by the Eknath Shinde faction.
