Realty companies in which NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s daughter and son-in-law are shareholders donate Rs 3 crore to BJP

The FIU of the Union FinMin red-flags these transactions, which took place some 20 days before Modi became PM

Donations were made to the BJP on the day Blackstone of Singapore put in FDI of Rs 240 crore in three Chordia firms

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At Sharad Pawar’s 75th birth­day celebrations last fortnight, with almost the entire political pantheon lined up in attendance, Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid a rich compliment to the Maratha strongman, who had broken away from the Congress and launched the Nationalist Con­­g­ress Party (NCP) over Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin. Pawar, said Modi, was like the proverbial farmer who can sense the weather and knows which way the wind will blow. Given Pawar’s long stint as agriculture minister, the analogy seems apt. But perhaps it was also loaded.

For it isn’t just Pawar,...