Mumbai, February 17 Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Sunetra Pawar and leaders from the NCP met Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday and demanded a CBI investigation into the January 28 air crash that killed Ajit Pawar.
Speaking to reporters, senior NCP leader Sunil Tatkare said that the chief minister assured that the state government will communicate with the Union Home Ministry in this regard.
Sunetra Pawar, accompanied by senior leaders Tatkare, Praful Patel, Hassan Mushrif, and her elder son Parth Pawar, met Fadnavis and handed over a letter seeking a CBI probe.
NCP leader Ajit Pawar and four others were killed in a plane crash at Baramati in Pune district on January 28. Earlier in the day, the aircraft accident probe agency, AAIB, said that special support has been sought for the retrieval of data from the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) of the Learjet 45 plane involved in the fatal crash.
"The chief minister has assured us that the state government will communicate with the Union Home Ministry in this regard. The government has already initiated a probe by independent agencies and has said it will order a CBI investigation. We feel that an investigation by the central agency would be comprehensive," Tatkare said.
The NCP legislature party is fully behind Sunetra Pawar, and there is no dissent, he said.
Tatkare said that BJP state president Ravindra Chavan met him at the NCP office and discussed the way forward for the Mahayuti alliance after its victory in the recent Zilla Parishad.
Tatkare also said that incidents such as bribery in NCP Minister Narhari Zirwal's office in Mantralaya last week have tarnished the image of the government and ministers.
Ministers have been asked to ensure such incidents do not recur and that appointments in their offices are made after proper scrutiny, he said.
Last week, the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) caught a clerk from the Food and Drug Administration department red-handed while allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 35,000 at the state secretariat, Mantralaya.