India, Dec. 19 -- There was no sparing Manikrao Kokate - Ajit Pawar was simply out of chips, for now. As a result, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) led by him has suffered the embarrassment of having two ministers dropped from the state cabinet, within just nine months of each other. Both stepped down in connection with criminal cases, a political liability the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance chose not to shoulder.

In March this year, then agriculture minister Dhananjay Munde resigned from the cabinet after a close aide, Walmik Karad, was arrested in connection with the brutal murder of Santosh Deshmukh, a village sarpanch in Beed district. The case snowballed into a political scandal, eventually forcing Munde to step down.

Now Kokate, wh...