Mumbai:
Maharashtra irrigation scam whistle-blower Anjali Damania has refused to apologise to BJP president Nitin Gadkari after alleging on TV that he had asked her to go slow on the Maharashtra irrigation scam. Mrs Damania took Mr Gadakari's name on NDTV, after initially referring to him as the "chief of an opposition party".
She has alleged that Mr Gadkari told her that he has "business relations" with Sharad Pawar, whose Nationalist congress Party is in alliance the Congress in Maharashtra. Mr Pawar's nephew Ajit Pawar, who is also deputy chief minister, is accused of being a key player in the Rs 72,000 crore scam.
Mr Gadkari has served a legal notice to Mrs Damania, accusing her of giving false statements to TV channels, including NDTV. The activist has hit back, saying there's no question of her apologising to the BJP President. "He has sent a defamation notice to me and he said if I apologise he won't file a suit against me. But I refuse to give an apology, because whatever I said is true. Every word that I said is what Mr Gadkari told me," she said today.
She told NDTV that when she met Mr Gadkari three time in connection with theirrigation scam, the last time in August at his Worli (Mumbai) home, where he allegedly told her to not push too hard to expose the scam.
Mrs Damania, who is part of India Against Corruption (IAC), released the imprint of an SMS she claims she sent to Mr Gadkari, expressing her disappointment at the position he had taken on the irrigation scam, as proof of her having met him. "My client strongly denies the false, baseless and defamatory statement that he has any business relations with Sharad Pawar. You are making such false and baseless statements only to make sensation with the object to defame my client," said the notice.
Mrs Damania took up investigating the irrigation scam, in which thousands of crores were spent by the Maharashtra government to build dams and canals when Ajit Pawar was water resources minister. The government's own figures show that after all that money only a 0.1 per cent increase in irrigated land took place. In the building of one such irrigation project, Mrs Damania's farmland, which had been with her for more than a decade was acquired. This prompted her to use RTI and uncover the scam.
She has alleged that Mr Gadkari told her that he has "business relations" with Sharad Pawar, whose Nationalist congress Party is in alliance the Congress in Maharashtra. Mr Pawar's nephew Ajit Pawar, who is also deputy chief minister, is accused of being a key player in the Rs 72,000 crore scam.
Mr Gadkari has served a legal notice to Mrs Damania, accusing her of giving false statements to TV channels, including NDTV. The activist has hit back, saying there's no question of her apologising to the BJP President. "He has sent a defamation notice to me and he said if I apologise he won't file a suit against me. But I refuse to give an apology, because whatever I said is true. Every word that I said is what Mr Gadkari told me," she said today.
She told NDTV that when she met Mr Gadkari three time in connection with theirrigation scam, the last time in August at his Worli (Mumbai) home, where he allegedly told her to not push too hard to expose the scam.
Mrs Damania, who is part of India Against Corruption (IAC), released the imprint of an SMS she claims she sent to Mr Gadkari, expressing her disappointment at the position he had taken on the irrigation scam, as proof of her having met him. "My client strongly denies the false, baseless and defamatory statement that he has any business relations with Sharad Pawar. You are making such false and baseless statements only to make sensation with the object to defame my client," said the notice.
Mrs Damania took up investigating the irrigation scam, in which thousands of crores were spent by the Maharashtra government to build dams and canals when Ajit Pawar was water resources minister. The government's own figures show that after all that money only a 0.1 per cent increase in irrigated land took place. In the building of one such irrigation project, Mrs Damania's farmland, which had been with her for more than a decade was acquired. This prompted her to use RTI and uncover the scam.
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