BJP steps up demand for Nawab Malik’s resignation

Cabinet minister Nawab Malik is escorted out of Enforcement Directorate office, at Ballard Estate, Fort, on Wednesday. Pic/Suresh Karkera

While the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) asked Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray to not insult Maharashtra by keeping Nawab Malik in the Cabinet just to save his government, Maha Vikas Aghadi's rank and file came together on Thursday to stand in solidarity with the minister who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) the day before.

'Sack Malik'

BJP's state spokesperson Keshav Upadhye said Thackeray should not buckle under pressure from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and sack Malik. "The rule that was applied to [former home minister] Anil Deshmukh should also apply to Malik because the minister has betrayed the country. It is unsafe for the country to let Malik stay in the office," he told a media conference at the party headquarters. The party's city president, Mangal Prabhat Lodha, also issued a statement demanding Malik's resignation.

BJP workers stage a protest, demanding Malik's resignation, on Thursday. Pic/PTI

Upadhye said the CM's "spineless politics would harm the country and the state... Saving the friends of the convicts of Mumbai serial blasts will be burying Balasaheb Thackeray's ideology". "The CM defended [suspended police officer] Sachin Waze and Anil Deshmukh. Now he is trying to save an anti-national person for securing a certain vote bank. This is like betraying the Shiv Sainiks," he said, even as senior MVA leaders and workers sat in protest and shouted anti-Centre slogans near Mahatma Gandhi statue, not very far from the BJP office.

Ministers join protest

Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, ministers Subhash Desai, Jayant Patil, Chhagan Bhujbal, Hasan Mushrif, Balasaheb Thorat, Ashok Chavan, Sunil Kedar and Vijay Vaddetiwar, city Congress president Bhai Jagtap and others attended the protest. Some Sena leaders were away in Uttar Pradesh for the poll campaign.

NCP supporters demonstrate against Malik's arrest on Thursday. Pic/ANI

Congress minister Thorat condemned the BJP's politics. "We are fighting together. The BJP has no moral right to seek Malik's resignation. The BJP did not sack the minister whose son killed farmers in Uttar Pradesh," he said. Reports coming in from various parts of Maharashtra said the MVA staged similar protests across the state. The BJP also took to the streets in Mumbai and elsewhere, demanding Malik's resignation.

State BJP president Chandrakant Patil, who led a protest at Dadar, said the protest will continue till the minister is removed. He also demanded resignations of other 'tainted' leaders. Party leader Kirit Somiya released a list of MVA leaders and their associates, calling them 'Thackeray Sarkar's Dirty Dozen', and later said some of them were already in jail and others will go behind the bars soon.

Baseless allegations

State NCP president and minister Jayant Patil said the allegations against Malik are "baseless" and that he will respond to all the claims of terror links in the court. "The BJP's attempt to overthrow the MVA government has not been successful yet. The action against the serving Cabinet minister is part of such a move," Patil said. Shiv Sena MLC Manisha Kayande, who also joined the protest, claimed that for the past 27 months, the BJP has been trying to destabilise the MVA government, which has performed well.

With inputs from Agencies