PANJIM: Government babu, Addl Collector Shabaji Shetye’s arrest on Tuesday with twenty five thousand rupees in cash, as a bribe installment has had a piquant fallout. It has got another Babu – leader of the opposition Babu Kavalekar – in trouble. Of course this Babu has himself to blame, for demanding a probe into the possible links of Revenue Minister Rohan Khaunte, in the Shetye bribery case.
Hours after Kavalekar, fired his salvo, he faced strong return fire from the Revenue Minister who sought investigation into various scams of the IDC, especially related to the allotment of plots, when Babu Kavalekar was the Chairman. Incidentally a complaint of this nature (without naming Kavalekar) has been pending with the ACB for years without little progress due a series of roadblocks.
“I will write to the Chief Minister to order an inquiry into the Goa Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) scam during the tenure of Kavalekar as IDC Chairman. Let him also be answerable,” Khaunte said at a press conference on Wednesday evening.
His reaction after Kavalekar sought an inquiry into the minister’s alleged links into the graft charges against Shetye, who was arrested by the Anti-Corruption Branch on Tuesday. “There has to be a probe whether or not he (minister) is linked with the case. I am not saying he is connected with the case but there should be a probe,” Kavalekar had said responding to a question during a press briefing. A visibly upset Khaunte shot back at Kavalekar saying, “Kavalekar should be the last person to talk about scams and bribery. Who owns a property and where, what is being done in Kerala, who owns a rubber plantation in Kerala, how the IDC scam started, all this needs to be probed.”
The Anti Corruption Branch is also conducting a separate preliminary inquiry against Kavalekar into the property at Pathanamthitta, Kerala. Interestingly, during the inquiry that began in 2012, ACB sleuths stumbled upon information regarding disproportionate assets including his bungalow worth Rs 1.38 crore as per government estimates. The alleged illegalities were allegedly during Kavalekar’s tenure as GIDC Chairman.
“We have to request the CM that as industries minister he needs to check into the scam because there have been loss of revenue, shortage of land, etc. Whatever happened in the past should be unearthed, there have been cases wherein properties are registered in the name of wife, sister, brother, etc,” the minister said insisting for an inquiry in the long forgotten scam.
Clearly, neither Shabaji Shetye, nor his alleged bribe givers, had any idea how the incident would snowball in a manner like this.
