Successive probes into Maharashtra’s sugar factories have yielded nothing: Ajit Pawar

Deputy CM decries ‘wild allegations’ and attempts to ‘move Bollywood from Mumbai’

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister and senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar on Friday refuted all allegations levelled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) pertaining to the sale of sugar factories in the State as “baseless”, while claiming that the processes of selling these factories were carried out in a “strictly legal manner”.

Speaking here, Mr. Pawar took potshots at Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath without naming the latter, remarking that while some people were trying to take Bollywood away from Maharashtra, the State and Mumbai city had “always remained the centre of the country’s filmmaking industry and would continue to remain so”.

Mr. Pawar, who had earlier promised that he would speak out in detail once the Income Tax raids on businesses owned by his relatives and aides had subsided, furnished information on the sale of more than 65 sugar factories in Maharashtra, which were carried out in the last few years under the tenures of both the erstwhile Congress-NCP and BJP-Shiv Sena governments.