NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) leader Sharad Pawar has criticized Amit Shah for failing to uphold the etiquette of the Home Minister’s position, putting a dent in rumors that his party has loosened its position toward the BJP. The senior politician was responding to Mr. Shah’s claims that the politics of “treachery and betrayal” that he had initiated in 1978 had come to an end with the BJP’s resounding victory in the Maharashtra Assembly elections.
While speaking at a state BJP convention in Shirdi on Sunday, Mr. Shah made an assault that was interpreted as a reference to Mr. Pawar leaving the then-Vasantdada Patil-led Maharashtra government in 1978 with 40 MLAs and going on to become the chief minister. Hitting back on Tuesday, Mr Pawar said, “I was the chief minister in 1978. I am not aware of his (Amit Shah’s) whereabouts then. When I was the chief minister, there were people like Uttamrao Patil from (BJP’s predecessor) Jana Sangh in my ministry.”
The head of the NCP (SP) stated that the decorum of the position of Home Minister should be upheld, pointing out that there used to be good communication between political leaders in the past and that, despite being in the opposition, then-prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee appointed him vice-chairman of the Disaster Management Authority following the 2001 Bhuj earthquake.
“There used to be ‘susamvaad’ (good communication) between political leaders earlier, but that is missing now,” he said. In his speech at the BJP convention, Mr Shah had said, “The victory of BJP in Maharashtra ended the politics of instability and backstabbing started by Sharad Pawar in 1978. You (BJP workers) have buried such politics 20 feet in the ground.” “From 1978 till 2024, Maharashtra was prone to political instability. You have shown the way by bringing in a stable and strong Devendra Fadnavis government,” he added.
In the Maharashtra elections, held in November last year, the BJP had won 132 of the state’s 288 seats and its Mahayuti allies, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s NCP, had bagged 57 and 41, respectively. Only 46 seats were won by the opposition coalition, the Maha Vikas Aghadi, which was made up of the Congress, Udhhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT), and the NCP (SP). Sharad Pawar’s party had placed last in the alliance with only ten seats between them.
