Published: Wednesday, Apr 21, 2010, 2:26 IST
By Harish Gupta | Place: New Delhi | Agency: DNA
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_big-guns-focus-on-wheat-touch-on-lalit-modi_1373754
Lalit Modi was not the main focus of the meeting which Sharad Pawar had with finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and home minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday morning.
The three are members of the empowered group of ministers (eGoM) on food; Pawar wanted the eGoM to find increased storage capacity for wheat as a bumper crop is coming.
However, the Modi issue inevitably cropped up at the end of the meeting. Nothing is known of what Pawar told them but it is clear that the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) are keen to close this controversial chapter at the earliest as there is urgent business pending in the parliament.
The BCCI will set up a committee to investigate the charges against Modi even as a similar probe is being conducted by the government agencies.
Pawar, on his part, will continue to persuade Modi to quit the game and promise to rehabilitate him later as he will continue as vice-president of the BCCI.
This will put the lid on the internal goings on in the cricket board and nobody would know what the government found in the “missing” files.
The Congress, on its part, doesn’t want to settle scores with Pawar on the Tharoor issue. In fact, Prithviraj Chavan, minister of state in the prime minister’s office and a Sonia loyalist, gave clear indications that the NCP is a partner in Maharashtra and the Centre, and no one wants to rock that boat.
Another party general secretary said, “When we did nothing in the Telgi matter, why shall we do anything to hurt this alliance over Tharoor?”
