Nawab Malik arrest | BJP wows to stall Maharashtra Assembly till Minister resigns 

State BJP leader Chandrakant Patil says MVA govt. support for Malik is tacit nod for Dawood

Maharashtra BJP president Chandrakant Patil on Tuesday said he would not allow the upcoming budget session of the State legislature to function until the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government sought the resignation of Minister Nawab Malik.

Speaking in Kolhapur, Mr. Patil expressed ‘shock’ that Mr. Malik, a senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader, who was recently arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with a case of money laundering and alleged links to underworld gangster Dawood Ibrahim, had not yet resigned. He alleged that MVA government was actively backing him instead.

“On February 23, the ED arrested Nawab Malik. The minimum expectation from Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and NCP chief Sharad Pawar, who remote controls the MVA government, was that a person [Mr. Malik] who had a direct hand in the activities of a criminal like Dawood Ibrahim activities would be asked to resign. Not only has this not happened so far, but the MVA’s leaders came out in Mr. Malik’s support by staging a protest outside the Mantralaya,” said the BJP state chief, warning that his party would not cease the agitation for Mr. Malik’s resignation.

Mr. Patil said that by not seeking the Minister’s resignation, the Maharashtra government was expressing its support for the criminal activities of Dawood Ibrahim.

 “Even an ordinary civil servant after being arrested has to be suspended within 24 hours. Here, a Cabinet Minister, whose links with the underworld are deemed serious enough that he is given ED custody by the court, has not yet been taken out of the State cabinet... The BJP will not permit the upcoming Budget Session from March 3 to function and our statewide agitation will go on until Mr. Malik resigns,” said the BJP leader.

The arrested NCP Minister, who had made headlines last year for his series of ‘exposes’ and allegations against the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and certain BJP leaders in the Aryaan Khan-Mumbai cruise drug bust case, had repeatedly said that it was only a matter of time before the BJP-led Centre unleashed central agencies against him.

Following his salvos against the NCB and some BJP leaders, former Chief Minister and BJP leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis had alleged that Mr. Malik had apparently struck a property deal with 1993 Mumbai bomb blast convict Sardar Shahwali Khan and Mohd Salim Ishaq Patel, said to be the ‘frontman’ of Haseena Parkar, Dawood Ibrahim’s sister.