Sharad Pawar opens doors for rebel NCP MLAS
MUMBAI: With around three months to go for the Maharashtra assembly elections, Nationalist Congress Party (SP) chief Sharad Pawar has changed his stand on taking rebel MLAS back into the party.
At a press conference on Tuesday, the veteran leader said the decision to re-induct leaders who had supported Ajit Pawar when the NCP split last year but now want to return to the Sharad Pawar camp would be taken on a case-to-case basis. As many as 40 out of 53 NCP MLAS joined Ajit Pawar when he rebelled against his uncle in June 2023.
Sharad Pawar, who had earlier said he would not take back the MLAS who went with Ajit, was asked again about the matter on Tuesday. He replied that there’s no problem in inducting leaders whose return will help the party and encourage the workers. “But those who have taken a lot from the party and were trying to damage it after leaving, for them I have to consult leaders, and their opinion will be respected,” he said.
Suryakanta Patil returns
Pawar was addressing the media after re-inducting former union minister Suryakanta Patil into the party, three days after she resigned from the BJP. The 75-year-old had left the undivided NCP in 2014 to join the BJP. Patil was supposedly upset with the BJP after it denied her candidature from the Hingoli Lok Sabha seat in the recently held general elections. Patil had represented Hingoli twice in the Lok Sabha, from 1998 to 1999 as a Congress leader and then from 2004 to 2009 as part of the NCP. During the second term, she was the minister of state for rural development and parliamentary affairs in the United Progressive Alliance government. Patil was earlier elected from the Nanded Lok Sabha constituency in 1991 when she was with the Congress.
Political circles are abuzz that several rebel MLAS are planning to return to the NCP (SP) as they are not sure of their poll prospects in the backdrop of the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi’s remarkable performance in the Lok Sabha elections.
According to state NCP (SP) president Jayant Patil, many leaders are interested in returning to the party. “I am not talking only about MLAS and ministers, but the common workers who are not holding any position and have lost their way in between are also interested in coming back to the NCP (SP),” Patil told reporters.
NCP says all is well
However, Maharashtra NCP president Sunil Tatkare clarified that the party is intact. “No MLA from our party will go anywhere. They all are loyal to Ajit Pawar,” he said. NCP MLA Narhari Zirwal, who was seen hobnobbing with NCP (SP) MP Bhaskar Bhagare, also clarified that he will not leave Ajit Pawar. “How many times we will move here and there or vice versa? It creates confusion among people. Sharad Pawar has always supported me, which I cannot deny. But today, considering the trouble Ajit Pawar is in and his style of functioning, I will stay in the party,” he said.