A scam in ‘labour’ constituency by misusing political power

Unmesh Gujarathi
Editor In Chief

The Special Investigation Team of ‘Sprouts’ has received shocking information that Praveen Yashwant Darekar, the controversial chairman of Mumbai Bank, misused the Shinde-Fadnavis government to get his brother elected unopposed, for the same he managed the election authorities.

Labour is the Constituency for the post of Mumbai Bank Director. This post not only requires the member to perform labour i.e. manual and physical labour, but his livelihood depends on labour. However, Praveen Yashwant Darekar who collected crores of rupees of black money, contested the elections from the ‘labour’ constituency for almost 20 years and grossly cheated the depositors.

On 3rd January 2022, Joint Registrar Bajirao Shinde stopped the fraud and declared Praveen Darekar ineligible as a ‘labour’. But at the end of July 2022, the coalition government of Shinde- Fadnavis was formed in Maharashtra. With the blessings of Devendra Fadnavis, Praveen Darekar again became the chairman of Mumbai Bank.

Praveen Darekar is considered adept at the abuse of office from the very beginning. After his reappointment, he immediately elected his brother Prakash Darekar unopposed from the ‘Labour’ constituency. The SIT of ‘Sprouts’ has found that they misused the government system for that.

One seat was vacant for the election of ‘Labour Co-operative Society’ of Mumbai Bank. Praveen Darekar managed the Election Adjudicating Officer in Pune to appoint Prakash to this post. For this, they put pressure on the Divisional Joint-Registrar Co-operative Societies and Election Adjudicating Officer and violated the election rules.

On October 4, 2022, an election circular was issued by the Divisional Joint-Registrar Co-operative Societies and Election Adjudicating Officer as well as Mumbai Bank. This circular was published on the next day i.e. 5th October 2022 in the ‘Pudhari’ newspaper. There was not clearly mentioned an election in this circular. Not only this, but the link to the election website given by them was not opening.

According to this circular, the date, time, and place for receipt and filing of nomination papers were given on the 6th and 7th of October 2022. Also, the 8th and 9th of October 2022 were a weekend and the office of the authority and the bank was closed. Also, the date for scrutiny of nomination papers was October 10, 2022.

This election process is in violation of election rules. This clearly shows the conspiracy of Praveen to get his brother Prakash elected unopposed.

Devendra Fadanvis sheilds Drekar

Member of the Legislative Council and former opposition leader Praveen Darekar was elected to the post of director for the past 20 years. During these 20 years, he committed numerous scams and collected black money worth crores of rupees. But after 2014, he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party under the leadership of then Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to avoid ED action. And he now has started doing scams again.