Tejas Navale

Pune: Ajit Pawar's troubles are far from over. Following his party's significant loss in the recent Lok Sabha elections, where they secured only one seat, he now faces renewed challenges in the 25,000 crore Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank scam case. Despite the police crime branch submitting an additional closure report clearing Pawar and others, social activists Anna Hazare and Manikrao Jadhav have objected to the report in court.

What is the Shikhar State Bank scam?

The Maharashtra Shikhar Bank scam involves significant financial fraud and mismanagement at the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank (MSCB), one of India's largest cooperative banks. Emerging around 2011, the scam included irregular loan disbursements to non-functional cooperative sugar factories and spinning mills, misappropriation of funds, and severe financial mismanagement.

As Ajit Pawar was the then director of the Shikhar bank, the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) filed a detailed chargesheet against seventy people, including Ajit Pawar, following the in-depth investigation of the case.

The Bhartiya Janata Party made it one of the major issues in the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections of 2014. However, since Ajit Pawar broke his ties with uncle Sharad Pawar and became a part of the BJP and Shinde government in the state, the investigation in the case took a new turn. In the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections of 2024, the economic offence wing of the Mumbai Police concluded that Ajit Pawar was not guilty in this case and thereby gave a clean chit to Ajit Pawar.

Accordingly, after the Lok Sabha elections, Mumbai Police submitted an additional closure report in the session court of Mumbai. In this regard, a hearing was held on Thursday in the court of Judge Rahul Rokde at the Sessions Court in Mumbai. However, at that time, advocates of Anna Hazare and Manikrao Jadhav objected to it and sought additional time to file an objection petition to it.

Therefore, accepting their demand, the court has scheduled the next hearing in this case on June 29.