Click to play videoNew Delhi: Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan has been asked to tender his resignation to Governor K Sankaranarayanan pending an inquiry into the Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society scam in Mumbai.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi accepted Ashok Chavan's resignation on Tuesday morning. The decision to ask Chavan to step down came hours before the winter session of Parliament was set to commence with the Opposition threatening to raise the issue.
The two-member committee comprising of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Defence Minister AK Antony has given its feedback on the scam and Chavan's role in it to Sonia.
The committee's report says that Chavan's family directly benefited from the scam. But it could not find any evidence against former chief ministers Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sushil Kumar Shinde. The committee says that the duo's involvement was procedural.
Chavan had already offered to resign in the wake of the Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society scam. The society was meant for Kargil war heroes and their dependents but a most of its flats were cornered by politicians, senior bureaucrats and senior defence forces officials.
Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Prithviraj Chavan is considered the frontrunner to replace Ashok Chavan as Maharashtra's chief minister.
Reacting to Chavan's resignation, BJP said that it should have happened a long time back.
"This is just a beginning. This was a long awaited demand of the BJP. This should have happened long back. Congress pretended to have an inquiry, party's inquiry is no good. The party cannot investigate when its own chief minister is involved in a case. How did the law get bent to save these politicians? We need to get answers for the sake of the people. We will take up this issue during Parliament session," said BJP spokesperson Nirmala Seetharaman.
The Shiv Sena went a step further and demanded that Maharashtra Cabinet should also resign along with Deshmukh, who is the Union Heavy Industries Minister, and Union Power Minister Shinde.
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