Patil to release report on civic polls if Cong withdraws

Nagpur, Jan 24 (UNI) Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister and senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader R R Patil today said he would release the intelligence report on the February one civic elections in the state if the Congress withdrew from the polls first.

Speaking to reporters here, Mr Patil, who also holds the home portfolio, described as ''baseless'' the reports in a section of press that intelligence inputs had indicated a dismal performance for the NCP at the civic polls.

Refusing to divulge what the intelligence inputs were, saying the oath of secrecy that he had taken on becoming the Deputy Chief Minister prevented him from doing so, Mr Patil said his department analysed the law and order situation in the state, and not the poll trends. Yet, he dared the Congress to pull out of the contest if it wanted him to divulge the findings.

Mr Patil, who was here to campaign for his party's candidates, said the Congress was so ridden with infighting that the NCP's real fight at the elections was with the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) combine. ''The Congress has so many factions that the people do not know which is the real one,'' he quipped. The saffron combine had been weakened considerably because of the splits in the Shiv Sena, and this would also harm the BJP, Mr Patil said.

The Deputy Chief Minister said a special squad would be formed within the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to conduct a thorough probe into allegations of corruption in Nagpur Improvement Trust (NIT), which is entrusted with the responsibility of developing civic amenities in the state's second capital. The four-member squad would be headed by an officer of the rank of Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) and consist of senior officials, he said.

On January 18, ACB sleuths trapped NIT Superintending Engineer N P Vaswani (since suspended) here on charges of taking bribe of Rs 4 lakh from a land owner to sanction a layout of plots on his property.

UNI