Pawar arranges exodus of his ministers for cabinet shakeup

It was 345 pm on Friday and there was complete quiet at Deogiri the official residence of Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar at Malabar Hill Except NCP ministers no one not even bodyguards and personal assistants were allowed to stay back in the bungalow Around 4 pm the silence was interrupted Ajit Pawar entered the meeting hall Without uttering much he distributed copies of resignation letters among ministers The ministers had no option but to sign the letters and hand them back to Pawar Jr Except Minister of State Bhaskar Jadhav all the 19 ministers put in their papers Jadhav was away and cited bad weather as the reason behind his chopper not taking off But his resignation is said to have been received through facsimile It only contained two lines stating ldquoI wish to submit my resignation on personal groundsrdquo After some time entered party chief Sharad Pawar and asked whether Jadhav was present After hearing the response he made a statement about how other political parties had young faces as their chiefs ldquoMadhukar Pichad despite his health and advancing age has done a good job as the state NCP chief We need to have a young face nowrdquo said the Union agriculture minister The names doing rounds for the post areu00a0R R Patil and Bhaskar Jadhav After his speech on preparations for the next elections the meeting was over Not a word was discussed about the resignations Just like that the mass exit had been attained On anvil for 2 months The NCPrsquos decision if party sources are to be believed was an act borne of desperation And the man who brought about the mass exit albeit unwittingly is none other than Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan who is believed to have been delaying the reshuffle exercise despite NCPrsquos insistence on it The party was left with no option but to seek resignations of all the members to enable the CM to go for it said a minister According to Chavan who spoke with a group of journalists at his official residence Varsha on Friday the NCPrsquos rearrangement would be over by next week The Pawarled party wants to drop three or four faces and their letters of resignations would reach the CM on Saturday The NCP had been asking the CM for a cabinet juggle as part of preelection preparations for two months About changes in portfolios for Congress ministers the chief minister remained noncommittal ldquoI will have to speak to the party high commandrdquo was his reply Asked if he was ruling out any changes in the Congress he said he was unable to confirm it ldquoSuch exercises are carried out to strengthen the partyrdquo he said ldquoThe NCP wants certain changes and they have informed me about itrdquo On June 4 soon after the inauguration of Maharashtra Sadan Sharad Pawar asked his nephew Ajit to call Home Minister Patil who was in the audience Shortly the trio left the venue in Sharad Pawarrsquos car It was confirmed there by party sources that NCP had decided to replace Pichad with a new face NCP had earlier informed the CM that it wanted to effect changes after June 5 NCP president Uddhav take digs at each other Over the Shiv Senarsquos demand for a worldclass theme park at Mahalaxmi Racecourse and its reservations to renewing BMC39s lease agreement of with the Royal Western India Turf Club RWITC Pawar chose to respond with sarcasm He did not utter a word about the NCPrsquos stance on the issue but instead contented himself by hurling a barb at Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray who is currently in the US ldquoThackeray gets new ideas while he is out of the country This time he might come back with a new ideardquo said Pawar Reacting to this from the US Uddhav Thackeray said ldquoBut we can never imagine urinating in parched dams and ridiculing people in droughthit areasrdquo referring to Deputy CM Ajit Pawar39s comments a few months ago Thackeray added quotSeeing the gambling at the racecourse Sharad Pawar hit upon the IPL We believed he respected Chhatrapati Shivaji39s horse but we are sad to learn that he took more pride in the horses on the racecourse After seeing the horsetrading at the racecourse for so many years now Pawar wants the venue to be kept open for the public quotWe never got ideas to construct a Lavassa on farmers39 landsquot Inputs from Agenciesu00a0