‘It helped end Prez rule’: Sharad Pawar’s hint on 2019 Fadnavis-Ajit Pawar plan

Sharad Pawar’s precise role in the 2019 episode has been the subject of much speculation over the past three years and he has always indicated that his nephew acted on his own.

PUNE: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) attempt to form a short-lived government with nephew Ajit Pawar helped to end President’s rule in Maharashtra in November 2019, Nationalist Congress party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar said on Wednesday.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar was asked about Devendra Fadnavis’s remarks about the short-lived government led by the BJP leader and NCP’s Ajit Pawar (HT Photo/Uday Deolekar)

“There was an attempt to form a government (by Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar). It helped to end President’s rule in Maharashtra,” Pawar told reporters in Chinchwad near Pune in response to a question on deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis’s statement last week that Sharad Pawar was also consulted before Ajit Pawar tied up with him to form the short-lived government in November 2019.

Sharad Pawar’s precise role in the entire episode has been the subject of much speculation over the past three years and he has always indicated that his nephew acted on his own. When Fadnavis suggested on February 13 that the veteran politician was in the loop, Sharad Pawar’s first reaction was a rebuttal.

“I thought Fadnavis was a cultured person and a gentleman. I never thought he would lie,” the 82-year-old politician who has been a dominant figure in Maharastra for four decades, said within hours of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader’s statement last week.

On Wednesday, his response was cryptic.

Asked if he was aware and why Ajit Pawar hadn’t spoken on Fadnavis’s claim, the NCP chief wondered if there was a need to speak about it.

“I just said that had this kind of exercise not happened, would the President’s Rule have been lifted? Had the President’s Rule not been lifted, would Uddhav Thackeray have been sworn in as the chief minister?” he asked.

Pawar brushed aside more questions on his role, saying whenever something happens in Maharashtra, people claim the role of one person in it.

Maharashtra was placed under President’s Rule on November 12, 1999, after the BJP and the Shiv Sena parted ways. As the Sena engaged the NCP and Congress leaders to work out an unusual alliance, governor BS Koshyari in an early morning move lifted central rule and administered the oath of office to Fadnavis as chief minister. Ajit Pawar, who took oath as his deputy, said the NCP legislators would back him. Over the next two days, the NCP lawmakers fell in line and forced Fadnavis to resign. The Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA government was sworn in on November 28.

To be sure, Maharashtra NCP president Jayant Patil in December last also suggested that the Ajit-led rebellion in 2019 may have been planned to get the President’s Rule lifted.

At a function, Patil said, “We can’t ignore the fact that the formation of the MVA government was smooth as the President’s Rule was lifted. When Pawar saheb does something, it takes some time to realise the motive behind it.”

In his February 13 remarks, Fadnavis did indicate that the NCP made the first move.

“We had an offer from the NCP that they needed a stable government and we should form such a government together. We decided to go ahead and hold talks. The talks happened with Sharad Pawar. Then things changed. You have seen how things changed,” Fadnavis said, referring to Ajit Pawar quitting the government 80 hours later.

Fadnavis also said there was more to this story and that he will reveal the other details at an appropriate time.

The BJP won 105 seats in the Maharashtra Assembly elections, the results of which were announced on October 24, 2019. The Shiv Sena, which fought the election in an alliance with the BJP, won 56 seats. But the two sides could not agree on the chief minister’s post and eventually broke up their alliance.

Sharad Pawar is believed to have played a key role in the formation of the Maharashtra Vikas Agadi government and insisted that Uddhav Thackeray should be the chief minister of the three-party coalition government, which eventually collapsed in June last year.