With Pawar canceling ED visit, cops heave sigh of relief

With the Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar canceling his visit to the office of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) here, party workers called off protests and the situation was normal, the police said.

A shut-down was called by NCP workers in Ahmednagar, Kolhapur, Hingoli, Pune, Gadchiroli, Jalna, Nanded, Akola, Satara and Solapur to protest the ED registering a case against Pawar in the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank scam.

The 'bandh' was around 70 per cent successful, but party workers called it off when Pawar canceled his plan to visit the ED office, a police official said.

Around a hundred NCP workers were detained in neighbouring Thane and released later, he said.

Pawar, who had said he would visit the ED office in south Mumbai on his own on Friday and give them whatever information they wanted, dropped the plan later, saying he did not want to cause inconvenience to people.

Mumbai police commissioner Sanjay Barve and joint commissioner of police (law and order) Vinoy Kumar Choubey met Pawar earlier in the day and told him that there could be law and order disruption in the city and elsewhere if he went ahead with his visit to the ED office.

With the NCP workers calling off their protests all over the state, the situation was now peaceful, the police official said.