Pawar meets CM Shinde again, discusses quota and sugar mill politics

Officials said the duo talked about issues related to the sugar mills and the rehabilitation of villagers who would be displaced by a dam project in Pune district.

MUMBAI: NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar met chief minister Eknath Shinde again on Saturday, making it the second meeting in less than two weeks. While the meeting, which lasted for half an hour, is significant, given the continuing discord between the Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Maratha communities over the issue of reservation, officials said the duo talked about issues related to the sugar mills and the rehabilitation of villagers who would be displaced by a dam project in Pune district.

NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar met chief minister Eknath Shinde again on Saturday, making it the second meeting in less than two weeks (PTI)

The chief minister on Saturday evening said that Pawar met him to talk about some pending works. “Pawar saheb met me for some pending work related to him and his MLAs. We also discussed a project. There was no political discussion, so there’s no need to draw political meaning out of the meeting” he informed.

Officials revealed that one of the issues Pawar raised was the issue of loans to cooperative sugar mills controlled by politicians from the opposition parties.

“The sugar mills related to opposition leaders have been ignored by the government,” Pawar is believed to have said. He also pointed out that the proposals of cooperative sugar mills run by NCP (SP) MLA Ashok Pawar, former NCP (SP) MLA Rahul Jagtap and Congress MLA Sangram Thopte were deprived of loan guarantees given by the state for securing a loan under ‘Margin Money Assistance’, a scheme run by the central government subsidiary National Cooperative Development Corporation.

An official said that the Dharavi Redevelopment Project, a joint venture of the state government and the Gautam Adani group, also came up in the meeting. A housing department official started briefing the two leaders on the status of the project when Pawar stopped him and said there should be a detailed presentation on it other time.

“While coming out of the meeting, I saw a few officials from the Adani Group and they may have had a discussion with the chief minister later,” the veteran leader told ABP Majha.

One more issue that was discussed was the rehabilitation of the project-affected people of Pune’s Gunjavani dam, which will be the first dam to supply water through pipelines for irrigation instead of an open canal system.

Located in Velhe taluka, Pune, the dam will be used to supply water to farms through a network of pipelines, for which land acquisition is on. An official said that Pawar demanded a proper rehabilitation package for the affected families.

In their last meeting on July 22, Pawar had asked Shinde about the assurances given to both Maratha activist Manoj Jarange-Patil and OBC activist Laxman Hake, who withdrew their respective indefinite hunger strikes only after the government’s assurances in the past. CM Shinde had said he would hold an all-party meeting and requested Pawar to attend it.

There has been rising discontent between the two major communities, which began after Jarange-Patil demanded blanket reservation for the Maratha community from the existing OBC quota. The OBCs have been staunchly opposing this and warning the government to refrain from taking any such decision.