NCP’s Jayant Patil accused of involvement in multi-crore scam

MUMBAI: In what have become a common occurrence, yet another senior Nationalist Congress Party leader is facing allegations of being involved in a multi-crore scam by a former IAS officer. Meanwhile, the party and its leader denying that there was any irregularity a Facebook post by a serving IPS officer has only further muddied the waters.

A former IAS officer Anand Kulkarni has alleged that the then finance minister of the NCP was involved in a ‘lottery scam’ that led to the state being defrauded of hundreds of crores of rupees. Kulkarni has alleged that Jayant Patil violated rules by allowing an online single-digit lottery ticket, which was illegal as per central government rules.

Kurlkarni also alleged as per rules the lottery ticket was supposed to be issued only once a week. The private operator Martin Lottery Agencies issued a lottery ticket every 15 minutes. There was no oversight on the Lottery operations as well as the main server of the lottery was kept out of the state which was again in violations of the Central Government Act.

Jayant Patil was holidaying abroad and he said, “ Will answer all questions when I return.”. The NCP, however, claimed that the allegations were baseless as the NCP had actually brought down the online lotteries from 3,000 to 30.