Guv meets Amit Shah after state aircraft row

MUMBAI: Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari reportedly met Union home minister Amit Shah in Delhi in an unscheduled visit to New Delhi, on Sunday. He met Shah in the morning in a closed-door meeting before leaving for Mumbai in the afternoon. The details of the meeting are still under wraps. The Governor returned to the city in the evening after a gap of three days.

The move is significant in the backdrop of the controversy over denial of the state’s sixseater Cessna Citation XLS airplane, to travel to Dehradun by the chief minister Uddhav Thackeray.

Koshyari, who was expected to return to the city on Saturday, changed his plans and reached Delhi on a commercial flight the same day. The Governor is locked in a bitter tussle with the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, which is now deepening with new issues.

The Governor had to face an embarrassment on Thursday as he went to the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport and boarded a state’s aircraft for travelling to Dehradun but had to deplane and take a commercial flight since the chief minister’s office (CMO) had not approved use of state’s plane.

The incident led to a blame game between the Raj Bhavan and CMO as the latter has said the former should have ensured that they had permission to use the aircraft before the Governor departed from his official residence. Chief secretary Sanjay Kumar said the state government will also seek a report from the secretary to Governor Santosh Kumar by the state general administration department.

Sena mouthpiece ‘Saamana’, in its editorial on Saturday, termed it as a personal tour. “The Governor was informed a day before his scheduled departure that he cannot be permitted to use the aircraft as his tour was a personal trip. Despite that, he went to the airport out of his stubbornness,” the editorial stated.