Once considered the closest aide of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) founder Sharad Pawar, party leader Praful Patel said he decided to go with the “majority view” within the NCP.
Speaking to The Hindu over phone on Tuesday, Mr. Patel claimed that majority of the NCP lawmakers and leaders had favoured a tie-up with the BJP a year ago.
“When the Shiv Sena-Eknath Shinde [Chief Minister] split happened last year, nearly all NCP MLAs had written a letter to party president Sharad Pawar to say that we should join the government. So, it has been brewing since then and it’s not something that happened yesterday,” said the leader who served as Minister for Heavy Industries and Civil Aviation during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime.