MUMBAI: The Maharashtra government yesterday took the Opposition for a ride, after the government failed to table the two-member Pradhan Committee report. It had promised the Shiv Sena-BJP combine that the report would be tabled on the last day of the Legislative Assembly. The Council sessions ended yesterday.
The Pradhan Committee was set up to inquire into last November’s Mumbai terror attacks, and had submitted the report to the Maharashtra chief minister recently.
Meanwhile, three opposition legislators were suspended from the Maharashtra Legislative Council for creating a ruckus in the house yesterday after the government failed to table the report.
However, the government placed the three-member Action Taken Report (ATR) prepared by senior bureaucrats.
The ATR placed the blame on the Mumbai police contrary to the Pradhan Committee which had given it a clean chit and praised the senior officials.
Earlier, sharp differences came to the fore in the Cabinet meeting held on Monday to discuss the tabling of the report in the Assembly.
Several ministers came out in defense of former Mumbai Police Commissioner Hasan Ghafour, while only a minority of them was critical of his role.
The ATR blamed all the senior police officials and raised question marks over the leadership quality of Ghafour and alleged that he failed in handling the situation.
The ATR also did not spare the then state Director General of Police (DGP) Anami Narayan Roy and alleged that he too failed to act swiftly and take control of the situation which led to chaos in the police machinery.
Roy was also alleged to have been instrumental in the delay of summoning the elite National Security Guards (NSG) commandos from Delhi.
Surprisingly, the ATR questioned the wisdom of the recent appointment of D. Shivanandan as the Mumbai police chief, when he too was responsible for intelligence failure as part of being the then commissioner of the state Intelligence Department.
The ATR also stated that there were serious lapses on part of senior police officers of Mumbai police during the terror attacks and that there were serious lack of coordination between Indian Police Service (IPS) officers and other federal security agencies in tackling the terror attacks.
