TWO recent related incidents in Nagpur have brought into sharp focus the corrupt and crooked face of BJP. A sports scandal in the Nagpur Municipal Corporation was unearthed and 101 corporators who were involved in it, most of whom belonged to BJP, were arrested by the police. These arrests made the RSS to resort to cheating no less than the Nagpur police commissioner in order to get the arrested corporators released. An RSS activist Abhay Pundlik was arrested while trying to cheat the police commissioner.

It all began when Shiv Sena and BJP was in power in Maharashtra and the RSS heavyweight from Nagpur Nitin Gadkari was a cabinet minister in the government. Both BJP and RSS tried to highlight Gadkari as a "model of development oriented politician". Nagpur Corporation elections were due in that period. With a faction ridden Congress party as an opponent, the BJP won the elections with a comfortable majority. People, out of frustration with the earlier Congress regime really voted for a change. Devendra Fadanavis, the traditional RSS worker, took over as mayor of the Nagpur city. Leave alone satisfying peoples aspirations, this new regime was home to a spate of corruption scandals, one of which was the sports scam.

In this situation two MLAs of Nagpur demanded an enquiry into the irregularities in the corporation. The Democratic Front government headed by Vilasrao Deshmukh accordingly appointed Nandalal commission to probe into this. The commission thoroughly investigated the matter and submitted a report, finding many officers and corporators guilty. The commission also recommended filing of criminal complaints against these persons. The report threw light on eight scandals viz. sports scam, electric poles scam, recruitment scam, health scam etc.

However the complaint was filed for the sports scam only. This sports material distribution scam is worth Rs 2.7 crore. After the filing of the complaint the police arrested 101 corporators. They were sent to police custody and later released on bail. On June 9 alone 76 corporators were arrested. BJP on the next day called for "Nagpur Bandh" which turned out to be a fiasco.

The flop of the bandh call was an alarming signal for the BJP. It realised that its mass base is getting eroded. As per BJP’s countrywide experience it was not to give up the matter so easily. It was planning a different game.

No one would have imagined BJP’s link in this episode. On June 14, 2001 Abhay Pundlik was arrested in the police commissioner’s office. He introduced himself as a Central Vigilance Officer and tried to cheat the commissioner. During investigations he was found to be an RSS activist and closely related to Nitin Gadkari and Devendra Fadanvis ( the then Mayor and presently MLA from West Nagpur Constituency ). It was also found that this whole planning was made in the majestic MLA Hostel in Mumbai on June 12, 2001. The plan was to blackmail the police commissioner and compel him to withdraw cases against the corporators.

Now Abhay Pundlik is in police custody and much more information is being extracted from him by the Nagpur police. All the print and electronic media have highlighted this matter.

It is a countrywide experience in case of BJP that it adopts unfair practices to capture power . After capturing power the episodes start with anti-people policies, corruption, then conspiracies, blackmails, murderous attacks, all in the name of Hindutva. The same tactics were adopted in Nagpur too, which as is known home for the RSS headquarters. BJP was really happy that it could capture power in Nagpur. But these two incidents have maligned its image. This will have an impact on the local politics in Nagpur.