CM Eknath Shinde issued instructions to all bureaucrats that files cleared by Ajit Pawar must first be run past his peer Devendra Fadnavis before a final clearance
After snubs from his uncle Sharad Pawar and other family members, including cousin Supriya Sule and nephew Rohit Pawar, Ajit Pawar had to face a major clipping of his wings from his colleagues in the government too.
Chief minister Eknath Shinde on Thursday, 31 August, issued instructions to all bureaucrats that any and every file cleared by deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar must first be run past his other (and first) deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis before being brought to him for final clearance.
It is a big setback for Ajit Pawar, who has always fancied himself as a super-chief minister even while he was a deputy under the Congress chief ministers. He had had to deal with four — Vilasrao Deshmukh, Sushil Kumar Shinde, Ashok Chavan and Prithviraj Chavan — apart from Uddhav Thackeray of the Shiv Sena.
Four of these five chief ministers, including Uddhav Thackeray, never questioned Ajit Pawar’s decisions and blindly countersigned all his files because they all felt obliged in one way or the other to his uncle Sharad Pawar. The only chief minister who resisted the Pawars’ overwhelming control of the bureaucracy was Prithviraj Chavan. He did sign the files—but not before going through each one of them with a fine-toothed comb.
In the last years of their government, this tendency of Prithviraj Chavan’s angered both uncle and nephew. Ajit Pawar even ended up publicly declaring that Prithviraj Chavan was the worst chief minister he had worked with (read stubborn and intransigent), while Sharad Pawar bad-temperedly — and rather boorishly — ‘diagnosed’ Chavan as having suffered a paralytic stroke over his ‘inability’ to lift a pen and sign the files.
But Prithviraj Chavan remained unmoved. “This is the era of RTI,” he said, “If tomorrow the courts raise a question about a wrong decision, as chief minister, it is I who will be ultimately held responsible. So I will not clear any file until I am convinced everything is okay.”
Relations still remain frosty between him and the Pawars for that very reason.
Now Shinde’s decision has brought forth a more colourful reaction from Ajit Pawar. “Are we here to play marbles?” (Aamhi kay gotya khelayla aalo ka /kya hum goti khelne aaye hain?)” he raged in a tacit admission that the move would reduce him to being just a cipher in this government.
Source: NH
