Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar on Saturday said his party’s stand of not joining hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party was always very clear, and even if any suggestion to the contrary came up, he refused to entertain the idea.
“If anyone did suggest that we should support the BJP, contrary to the stand we had taken, [even] then, many in the party, myself included, did not agree. Our stand to not go with the BJP was very clear,” said the former Maharashtra Chief Minister at a news conference in Pune.
“Our views are not coherent with [the ideology of] the BJP. We had not asked for votes in the assembly elections to ally with the BJP, but to fight against them. I was firm in my stand that those who believed in our ideology would be betrayed if we went with the BJP,” he added.
Taking a jibe at his nephew and rebel NCP leader Ajit Pawar, who is now the State’s Deputy CM, Mr. Pawar said that if anyone who had taken the oath of office in the wee hours of the morning was claiming that it was the party’s policy, that person “should not be taken seriously”.
The Ajit Pawar-led faction of the NCP, which joined the Shiv Sena-BJP coalition government in July earlier this year, has claimed in the past that the senior Pawar, too, was in favour of forming an alliance with the BJP at one point, but changed his decision later.
Asked about his former associate and Ajit faction leader Praful Patel’s remark on one day writing a book about the politics in his life, Mr. Pawar said, “It is a good thing that he is writing a book. He should write a chapter on why people are leaving his party.”
“I even heard that Enforcement Directorate officials had visited his house in Mumbai; there should be a chapter on this topic too,” he added.
Uncle reached out’
Mr. Pawar’s statements came a day after his nephew alleged that the NCP had reached out to him for a “patch-up” meeting.
Speaking at Karjat on Friday, Ajit Pawar had claimed that a meeting was arranged for the purpose of a reconciliation on August 12 in Pune. “If my uncle did not like the decision to join the Shiv Sena-BJP government, why did he seek the meeting,” he asked.
