2 crore paid to ‘Matoshree’, Sena neta claims it was for his mom | India News – Times of India

MUMBAI: Shiv Sena corporator in the BMC House that recently ended its term and chairperson of the civic body’s powerful standing committee Yashwant Jadhav made a payment of around Rs 10 crore in cash to acquire tenancy rights in his residential building and another Rs 2 crore to his mother and entered it in a diary as ‘Matoshree‘ on Gudi Padwa last year, which the Income-Tax department has found suspicious.
Matoshree is also the name of the Thackeray residence in Bandra.
The I-T department is also probing a Rs 15 crore repayment of an unsecured loan to a Kolkata-based shell company, which was routed back to the company of his aide Bimal Agarwal. This money was used by Jadhav to purchase a hotel and a building which had tenants and operated on a pagdi system, I-T sources said.
All these transactions took place between 2018 and 2022, when Jadhav was chairman of BMC’s standing committee. All those elected corporators in 2017 became former corporators this month as the term of the House ended.
Jadhav told I-T officials that ‘Matoshree’ meant his mother. He received Rs 2 crore in donation and had used it for distribution of gifts on Gudi Padwa, the Maharashtrian new year. Another noting in the diary was a watch of Rs 50 lakh to Matoshree. Jadhav told I-T he distributed watches among people in the name of his mother. I-T found both replies unsatisfactory.
Agarwal and Jadhav were not available for comment.
The investigation found Jadhav had acquired tenancy rights of 31 flats in Bilakdadi Chambers, where he stays, with the help of Agarwal’s company Newshawk Multimedia Pvt Ltd. In the agreement between the tenants for surrendering their tenancy rights in favour of the company, there was no mention of any amount. Jadhav paid all of them in cash and in case of two tenants in the US and Canada, the amounts were transferred through hawala, sources said. Jadhav paid Rs 4 crore to purchase ownership of Bilakadi Chambers from the landowner.
Bimal Agarwal was arrested by the CBI a few years ago and then by the ED. Agarwal came out from Tihar jail on bail in 2018 and started to work with Jadhav. Agarwal got different contracts of BMC worth Rs 30 crore during the pandemic with the help of Jadhav, sources said. BMC allotted contracts through bidding, and Yashwant Jadhav was not allowing anyone else to bid for work in Byculla area, from where his wife Yamini Jadhav is MLA, I-T sources said. He even threatened one of the contractors, Suraj Singh Deora, who won the BMC contract in the area, so that Agarwal could get the work. An audio clip of Jadhav threatening Deora had gone viral on social media in 2020.