Over three years after he joined hands with Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar to stage a coup and form the government in Maharashtra, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Monday said the move had the support of NCP chief Sharad Pawar.
The State was taken by surprise after the 2019 Assembly poll when the then Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari swore in Mr. Fadnavis as the Chief Minister and Mr. Ajit Pawar as Deputy Chief Minister on the morning of November 23, 2019. However, the government lasted for just three days and Shiv Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray was sworn in as the Chief Minister with the support of the NCP and the Congress.
“We had an offer from the NCP, which said they needed a stable government and we should form such a government together. We decided to go ahead and hold talks, which happened with Sharad Pawar. Then things changed and everyone has seen how they changed,” Mr. Fadnavis said, referring to Mr. Ajit Pawar quitting the government 80 hours later.
“In all fairness I want to state that Ajit Pawar took the oath with me with honest intentions... but later on their [NCP’s] strategy changed,” Mr. Fadnavis said at an event organised by a vernacular TV channel.
Hitting out at Mr. Fadnavis, Mr. Sharad Pawar said he could not believe that the BJP leader would take recourse to falsehood. “I felt that Devendra is a cultured person and a gentleman. I never felt that he will take recourse to falsehood and make such a statement.”
To the NCP and other parties it had appeared that Mr. Ajit Pawar had staged an intra-party rebellion and was trying to form a government with the BJP by taking his own faction of MLAs within the NCP. However, Sharad Pawar’s iron hand prevailed and the NCP failed to split despite his nephew’s (Ajit Pawar) temporary defection.
Despite contesting the polls jointly, the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena had severed all ties with the BJP after the long-standing allies fell out over the CM’s post. Mr. Ajit Pawar was sworn-in again as the Deputy Chief Minister in the tripartite Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition (of the Shiv Sena, the NCP and the Congress) which came into being until being toppled by rebel Sena leader and current CM Eknath Shinde’s recent coup.
