Aurangabad, Feb 15:
Revenue Minister Balasaheb Thorat granted a stay on the probe orders of Minister of State for Revenu Abdul Sattar over the Jinsi area land deal of Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC). There is speculation over political strife between the two leaders in the district because of this matter.
According to details, Dr Dilawar Mirza Baig made a complaint with Minister Abdul Sattar about irregularities while selling APMC’s 15,945 square meters of land of Jinsi. He had alleged that all the norms were flouted during the deal.
Jaimalsingh Randhwa and Pundlikappa Ambhore also made similar complaints with deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar and Cooperative Minister Balasaheb Patil.
Sattar had directed the district collector to probe the matter. A committee led by an additional district collector set up and started an enquiry. The enquiry report was awaited.
APMC secretary Vijay Shirsath filed a review plea in the quasi-judicial court of the Thorat against the probe orders.
During the hearing, it was argued that the deal was done with the permission of the Directorate of Marketing while Cooperative Minister was also doing the enquiry into the matter.
“Despite this, Minister Sattar gave probe orders. It is not good to have a parallel enquiry of a case into different courts. It is causing huge losses to APMC,” it was said in the hearing with Minister Thorat. Hearing arguments, Thorat granted the stay on Sattar’s orders.
In the past, when Balasaheb Thorat was district guardian minister and Sattar was in Congress, they had a dispute in a meeting held at the district. Today, Thorat is Revenue Minister while Sattar is a minister of State (Revenue).
It is speculated that the decision of Thorat may hurt Sattar and this will result in intensifying differences between them.