Pawar should resign from BCCI and concentrate on agri: Gadkari

Mumbai, Mar 28 (UNI) Coming down heavily on Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar following the dismal performance of the Indian Cricket Team at the World Cup, senior BJP leader Nitin Gadkari today said the Minister should step down as the Board of Control for Cricket (BCCI) President and instead concentrate on his Ministry.

His comments came while participating in the discusion on the Budget in the Legislative Council. Recalling the incident when Australian cricketer Damien Martin had jostled Mr Pawar while taking the Champions Trophy, he said, ''In fact Martin was telling Mr Pawar that he should leave cricket and rather concentrate on Agriculture.'' The situation of farmers is very bad as over 3,000 farmers have committed suicide while situation of the Indian cricket also was not good, Mr Gadkari said, referring to the team's performance.

Mr Gadkari, who is also the state BJP president, demanded a CBI inquiry into all the corruption charges in the slum re-development scheme and mill land allotment.

Describing the budget as completely bogus and meaningless, he said the government should provide a 'lantern' to all the legislators along with the budget bag as Maharashtra was facing severe load shedding.

The leader, who was the PWD minister in the Shiv Sena-BJP government, said when the alliance government had come to power in 1995, the State had a debt of Rs 22,000 crore and it reached over Rs 39,000 crore in 1999, while now the total debt was over Rs one lakh crore.

He said despite this, the government had not done anything for the new power generation projects and termed all the memorandum of understanding signed for power projects ''useless''.

UNI