MAHARASHTRA Revenue and Agriculture Minister Eknath Khadse, the number two in the BJP-led state government, addressed a press conference at the BJP office in Mumbai on June 4 to announce his resignation. Putting up a brave face, he said he had resigned from the state government to uphold high moral values of BJP, although the charges of corruption levelled against him were “baseless” and those pointing fingers at him had not produced any evidence. Projecting himself as a martyr, he announced he had asked the chief minister to conduct a probe and that he would not join the ministry until he was cleared of the charges. The demand for Khadse’s resignation was made first on May 13 but he had continuously been refusing to resign, even after new charges came to the fore, including the one that phone calls were made from terrorist Dawood Ibrahim’s residence on his mobile. The demand for Khadse’s resignation, which grew louder by the day, exposed BJP’s claim of providing a corruption-free government at a time when the party was celebrating two years of the Modi government. The central BJP leadership had to take note of it. Khadse tried to put pressure on BJP and Chief Minister Devendra Fadanvis by refusing to attend a cabinet meeting on May 31 and staying put at Jalgaon, his hometown. Fadnavis submitted a report to BJP president Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 1 and the BJP central leadership’s order to resign was communicated to Khadse on June 3 night. The central leadership, it is reported, had threatened to sack Khadse. Khadse was given clean chit by BJP state president Raosaheb Danave three times since the demand for his resignation arose, the latest was on June 3. Besides Danave, several senior Maharashtra ministers -- Sudhir Munguntiwar, Prakash Mehta, Chandrakant Patil and Vinod Tawade -- flanked Khadse at the press conference. The conference was wound up without providing opportunity to reporters to ask questions. On May 13, the Maharashtra Anti-Corruption Bureau arrested one Gajanan Patil of Muktaai Nagar in Jalgaon, the home town of Khadse, on the charges of demanding bribe of Rs 30 crore from Dr Ramesh Jadhav of Mumbai. Jadhav’s institution, International Society for Excellence in Project Management and Research, had filed a revision petition for allotment of a plot of land in Kalyan tehsil in Thane district. The petition had been pending with Khadse. The market value of the plot, as per the state government, was about Rs 300 crore. Patil had demanded the bribe to get the petition cleared in favour of Jadhav’s institution. Jadhav came in contact with Patil during his visits to the state secretariat to follow up on the petition. Patil was known to be very close to Khadse. However, Jadhav did not give bribe. He filed a complaint with the Anti-Corruption Bureau which arrested Patil after eight months of investigation. While the above scandal was raging, Preeti Menon of AAP alleged that calls were made on Khadse’s mobile from the residence of Dawood Ibrahim. The Police Commissioner of Mumbai said that investigations were on. While these two issues were in public domain, a builder from Pune, Gawande, charged Khadse with misusing his position as Revenue Minister to buy a plot of land in Bhosari MIDC in Pune in the name of his wife Mandakini and son-in-law Girish Choudhary. The plot was acquired and owned by Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC). Its market value was about Rs 30 crore and it was purchased for Rs 3.75 crore by Khadse, who defended the purchase. Khadse is not the first minister of the BJP-led government against whom charges of corruption have been levelled. Corruption charges were levelled earlier against six ministers -- Pankaja Munde, Vinod Tawade, Deepak Sawant, Ranjit Patil, Baburao Lonkar and Chandrashekhar Bawankule. Fadanvis gave all these ministers clean chit but he did not give clean chit to Khadse and assured that investigation would be carried out. He has announced setting up of an inquiry by a retired high court judge as demanded by Khadse. However, it has not been clarified whether it will be set up under the Commission of Enquiry Act. Khadse was the leader of opposition in the previous Assembly and was a claimant for the chief minister’s post after BJP won in the last election. It is said that his relations with Fadanvis are not good. All political parties including CPI(M) and other Left parties demanded Khadse’s resignation. BJP’s ally Shiv Sena also made the demand, but much later. The Left parties staged a demonstration at Azad Maidan on May 26 demanding his resignation. Khadse is the first BJP minister to be forced to resign on serious corruption charges after BJP came to the power at the Centre and in the state. BJP’s claim of providing a corruption-free government has now fallen flat.