OFF THE RECORD review on some of headlines…

Who is this Lodha who donated Rs. 5 crores to the NCP in 2019?

What more bad days for the BJP in Maharashtra? Recently got hold of the copy of the letter addressed to the Election Commission written by S R Kohli (Permanent Secretary of the NCP) pertaining to donations received by the NCP party during the financial year 2019-2020. The list of donors is interesting but what caught the eye was the donor whose company’s name appears on the 14th spot. It says, “Lodha Developers Ltd” and the donation was made to the NCP party vide cheque number 068482 dated 15.4.2019 for the amount of Rs. 5 crores. Yes, just before the Vidhan Sabha elections! Shocking!!

Suraj Thakur gives MLA Zeeshan Baba Siddique a tough fight.

In a neck-to-neck battle for the post of Mumbai Youth Congress President, a small time karyakarta of Congress and twice elected NSUI president Suraj Thakur has literally given sitting Bandra MLA & son of Congress big-wig Baba Siddiqui’s son, Zeeshan, a fight he will remember for a long time. While Suraj having no financial capacity or standing in front of Baba and his son Zeeshan, yet the youth of the party stood behind Suraj and got him 74,000 votes. But, as per what we hear, after a lot of support even from the Yuvasena and Zeeshan using all his ‘power’, Zeehsan could gather only 6000 more votes than Suraj i.e., 80,000 votes. Now the decision lies entirely on interview process to be held in Delhi. I happen to speak to lot of Congress people and they think it is time now the party should act as to what Rahul Gandhi is saying. To get out of “mama-bhanje” power distribution. We hope Suraj gets his due as already Siddique’s plate looks full at this time.

My mistake.

If you recollect, I had written about a very powerful bureaucrat from MMRDA about to retire, how his wife’s brother was involved in getting him his “share” of everything, readers, the information was totally incorrect. I happen to meet this bureaucrat through a common friend and learnt that the brother of the missus of this bureaucrat is not even living in Mumbai nor the wife has any ‘mooh-bola-bhai’; in fact, the real brother is serving the nation in some other state. I was misinformed and happen to juggle up the information for some-one else.

Minister Sanjay Rathod & Puja Lahu Chavan

What was the mistake of this young karyakarta Puja Lahu Chavan? Her only mistake was she loved the man who made her false promises. The entire episode was covered by my father, the only journalist who wrote about it fearlessly, in 3 parts. What surprises me, none of the English print media nor any channel gave this news any importance and the news never made it to the mainstream media and there was no witch-hunting. The only channel which continuously gave coverage was Marathi News channel News 18 Lokmat. The reason is not Puja or her sad story. From what I hear CM Uddhav Thackeray was upset with the channel for some reason when he had visited Vidharbha, and in his typical style of getting back, CM withdrew all advertisement commitments for the channel.! Again, I will tell you in advance here, nothing will happen to Sanjay Rathod. Now we have an addition in this Ministry. First we have Ministers relatives connected with drug syndicate, then ministers who have extra marital affairs and now we have ministers for whom people literally die….

Governor Koshyari v/s CM

Well, Friday was Shiv-Jayanti. Governor as per ritual came to Shivaji Park and paid his respects to Maharaj and Governor still had some 30 minutes before he could leave for his next commitment. What do you think he was ‘guided’ to do? No, he was not taken to Balasaheb Thackeray Memorial, nor Veer Savarkar memorial to spend those 30 minutes. He was taken to Shivaji Park Club for some felicitation which he could have done any other day even sitting at Raj Bhavan. Yes, Governor was taken to a club! Don’t ask me who must have guided the Governor and why? By the way, CM has stopped using Rajbhavan’s helipad completely.

Vikrant Hemant Joshi 

Comments 2

  1. Narendra Patil says:

    विक्रांत मला आदरणीय श्री हेमंत जोशी यांचा नंबर पाठव, आमचे जुने संबंध आहेत, पण नंबर माझ्या कडे आता नाहीं.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *