NAGPUR: Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Saturday accused the former Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government of allegedly giving a "contract" to certain officials to fabricate cases against him and other BJP leaders, with the intention of imprisoning them. Speaking to reporters here in Nagpur, Fadnavis claimed that the Uddhav Thackeray-led administration's efforts to incarcerate him and his party colleagues were unsuccessful because many honest officials refused to file these false charges.

"During the MVA government, 'supari' (contract) was given to certain officials to put me, Girish Mahajan, Pravin Darekar and several other leaders in jail. But, they could not do it, because there were many good officials at that time who refused to lodge such false cases," the former chief minister claimed. Fadnavis made these remarks in response to a question about former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh's allegation that former home minister Anil Deshmukh pressured him to bring false charges against certain BJP leaders. "What Singh said about attempts to arrest me and other BJP leaders is absolutely true," Fadnavis stated. "He mentioned one incident, but there were actually four separate instances where conspiracies were plotted to wrongfully detain me."

Fadnavis has been engaged in a public exchange of words with Nationalist Congress Party (SP) leader and former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh, who has accused the BJP leader of attempting to apply pressure, while he (Deshmukh) was the home minister in the previous MVA government, to implicate prominent politicians, including then Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. Deshmukh stepped down as home minister in 2021 after Param Bir Singh accused him of setting a monthly target to collect Rs 100 crore from bars and restaurants in the city. Earlier this week, Deshmukh claimed that Fadnavis had tried to protect Singh from arrest by encouraging him to make allegations against Deshmukh in an effort to bring down the MVA government. Both Fadnavis and Singh have denied the claims made by the senior NCP (SP) leader.

Dismissed Mumbai police officer Sachin Vaze, who is an accused in the Rs 100 crore extortion case involving Deshmukh, had recently claimed that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has evidence that Deshmukh was collecting money through his personal assistant (PA).