Mumbai, Sept 27: India against Corruption (IAC) activist Anjali Damania has alleged that she met BJP president Nitin Gadkari to highlight the irrigation scam in Maharashtra but the opposition party chief tried to play it down "citing business interests with the NCP". Gadkari has denied the charge saying he never met her.
Anjali Damania, who has fought illegal dams with the Right to Information (RTI) Act said on Wednesday that Gadkari told her he would not take a stand on irrigation scams since he had a business relationship with the NCP supremo Sharad Pawar.
Damania had earlier refrained to name Gadkari, and had only mentioned as president of a top opposition party, but after Gadkari issued a denial saying he had not met her, Damania hit back on Friday naming him.
Damania said she met Nitin Gadkari on August 14 at around 10 am at his residence in Worli, Mumbai, since she had heard that a religious leader had asked the BJP not to pursue irrigation scams and dissuade BJP leader Kirit Somaiya from filing a public interest litigation petition on irrigation and other scams.
Dmania said her appointment with Gadkari was fixed by a friend who accompanied her, along with another person.
“I was told that Gadkari was being persuaded by this religious leader to ask his colleagues in the party to ease up on irrigation scams, allegedly perpetrated by the NCP,” she said.
The purpose of her meeting Gadkari was to persuade him to pursue such cases in public interest.
However she alleged that to her shock and dismay, Gadkari said he had close links with the NCP, and in any case, Kirit was an eccentric man and he did not know what he was doing.
Gadkari, she said, had told Somaiya that there was not need to file PIL petitions, and that was the work of activists. As party members, it was adequate to raise issues in the legislature or hold press conferences.
Gadkari, according to Damania, also hinted that in politics, there could be the possibility of seat-sharing with the NCP. “I was so upset that afternoon that I wrote a long text message which I sent to his personal number,” she said.
Damania and others and Somaiya had already filed petitions in the Bombay High Court against irrigation scams.
Somaiya was to file one more petition against NCP Minister Sunil Tatkare on his alleged involvement in land scams.
She said there was no entry register at Gadkari's house, but there was no way he could deny he had met her. She had met him once in New Delhi last year and in Mumbai in August last year. This was her third meeting.
“I challenge him to a public debate and I will see how he doesn't know me.”
“First he talks rot and then he lies. I had not named him at the press conference, then why did he clarify and say he has never met me,” she asked.
BJP rubbished the charge by Damania against Gadkari, alleging that the “dirty tricks” department of Congress is at work to derail the opposition's on-going national conclave.
“On the eve of BJP's national conclave a deliberate and planned effort is being made by the dirty tricks department of the Congress to defame Gadkari and to divert attention from the meet.
We deny these baseless allegations,” party spokesperson Prakash Javadekar told reporters in Surajkund where the party's National Council meet is underway, a day after the party's National Executive meeting.
“The people of Maharashtra know that BJP has always been in the forefront in the fight against corruption and the irrigation scam. There is only one case filed in the irrigation scam and that is a PIL filed by our party secretary Kirit Somaiya,” Javadekar said.
Javadekar said BJP leader Devendra Phadnis had raised this issue three years back and demanded a White Paper. “We have raised this irrigation scam in every Assembly session in Maharashtra as well as in every public meeting,” Javadekar said.
