Prospect of Gadkari revelations cheer Vidarbha activists

Sources in the Kejriwal camp said, there are many revelations about Gadkari, we jsut have to wait and watch

Group kejriwal is readying for its next set of revelations today and sources confirmed that BJP president Nitin Gadkari would be the target this evening.

Arvind Kejriwal had told Business Standard this week that he had six people about whom he could make important revelations. They would decide on the person a day earlier.

Kejriwal had mentioned Gadkari on the day he announced shifting of his battle with law minister to Farukkabad. Yet there was some uncertainty whether he would spring a surprise today.

RTI activist Anjali Damanya, who had exposed an irrigation scam in Maharashtra recently and Nitin Gadkari's links, has reached Delhi to take part in today's press conference, thus giving further indication that Gadkari indeed would be targeted. Activists working on water and irrigation as well as those working on the woes of Vidarbha farmers are hoping that the revelations would bring forth conclusive evidence on some of the issues they were fighting against in the rain fed region now best known for the agrarian distress there.

Says Himanshu Thakkar of South Asia network of dams rivers and people: There could be more concrete evidence against Gadkari especially after he became BJP president and his interest in the irrigation projects in Vidarbha.

Earlier revelations have shown that his associate and mp away sa chetti had got contracts in the irrigation projects and that Gadkari had written five times to the union water resources ministry asking it to release funds for the Gosikhurd project.

Several BJP leaders were rewarded with contracts in this project and they were elevated as MLCs later by Gadkari, says Thakkar.
The role and partnership of the NCP in all this also has to come out, he said.

Then there is a flurry of thermal projects making vidarbha a capital of sorts as far as power generation is concerned for the whole state.

Who benefited from this concentration of projects in a water deficit area is a question that is being asked again and again, says kishore Tiwari the activist who has been playing the role of a grave digger of vidarbha keeping count of farmers suicides on a daily basis.
Tiwari recently joined kejriwal's party on the day the party was announced.

According to Tiwari an entire river was diverted for the thermal projects when farmers have been struggling with water shortages.

He also openly calls Gadkari's role as a social worker dubious. He has been literally goading farmers to their death by promoting sugar cane cultivation in a water scarce rain fed region, says Tiwari. He has been pushing sugar cane cultivation with assistance to farmers on the one hand in the name of socio economic development and on the other hand the fruits of the labour of these farmers has been feeding his sugar business, says Tiwari.

Activists also point at the possibility of kejriwal picking on older stories of corruption revolving around Gadkari namely those dating back to his days as PWD minister in Maharashtra when he was accused of giving infrastructure contracts to the company Ideal Road Builders in which subsequently his son was made an independent chairman.

There have been revelations about the large number of contracts this company received during this period in the mid 90s.

Sources in the Kejriwal camp said that there are so many things about Gadkari.

You have to wait and watch.