Pawar-Modi meet and guessing game in Maha

Top leaders from Pawar’s party are tight-lipped although it is likely that they are unaware what their boss discussed with Modi. Even the Mahayuti leaders are curious, and a couple of them even dialled a senior NCP (SP) leader to find out. He told them he was as clueless as them, and the only three people in the know were Modi, Supriya Sule and Pawar himself.

At the height of the CJP agitation at Jantar Mantar in Delhi, NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar and daughter MP Supriya Sule called on PM Narendra Modi last Wednesday. Pawar later tweeted that he met the PM in connection with farmers’ demands and also the students’ agitation whose site he had visited a day earlier. With education minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation on Saturday, the agitation has been called off but people in Pawar’s party as well as other parties in Maharashtra are still trying to find out what exactly happened in the meeting. Was it about the entry of the NCP (SP) into the NDA directly or via a merger of the two factions or was it about offering issue-based support to the government, especially in connection with the delimitation bill? Pawar’s decision could change a lot of things in Maharashtra politics.

Pawar-Modi meet and guessing game in Maha

Top leaders from Pawar’s party are tight-lipped although it is likely that they are unaware what their boss discussed with Modi. Even the Mahayuti leaders are curious, and a couple of them even dialled a senior NCP (SP) leader to find out. He told them he was as clueless as them, and the only three people in the know were Modi, Supriya Sule and Pawar himself.

Meanwhile, suspicious about his moves, the Maharashtra Congress is avoiding any collaboration with Pawar’s party. Its leaders in the state did not invite the NCP (SP) for their agitations on the NEET issue.

Cautious Mahayuti allies avoid criticising CJP

The BJP’s allies in Maharashtra—the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Sunetra Pawar-led NCP—chose to be cautious and not criticise the Cockroach Janata Party or the agitating students. Although the two parties did not publicly support the agitation, they did not defend the Modi government against the allegations either. The Shinde Sena covered all its flanks: it lamented the police brutalities against the students protesting in Delhi but Shinde also criticised Congress leader Rahul Gandhi after he staged a sit-in agitation near PM Modi’s residence. Significantly, Sena leader and social justice minister Sanjay Shirsat visited CJP founder Abhijit Dipke’s house in Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar on Sunday to congratulate his parents, with whom he claimed to go back a long way.

CM upset with NCP MLA for airing phone talk online

Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis is apparently unhappy with Deolali’s NCP MLA Saroj Ahire for posting a recording of her conversation with him on her social media account. Following protests by her constituents, especially traders, about the frequent power outages at night, Ahire dialled Fadnavis and complained. The chief minister, who also heads the state energy department, told her the issue could be because of a common feeder being used for agricultural and domestic connections, and said he would instruct local officials to sort it out.

When Ahire posted the conversation on her social media account, senior BJP minister Girish Mahajan strongly objected. “You can call the chief minister and discuss issues but recording the conversation and broadcasting it on your social media account for publicity is not appropriate. An elected representative should behave responsibly,” he remarked. Ahire told the media that she had to air her grievances to the chief minister since the administration has not been responding despite locals agitating for eight days. The recording was made public only to inform the people, she insisted.

Parth Pawar’s wedding and religious customs

These days, a section of the NCP appears to be busy with the wedding of Parth Pawar, son of the late Ajit Pawar and deputy chief minister Sunetra Pawar. On Thursday, the party issued a press release, saying that NCP leader Umesh Patil met the Kolhapur-based Shankaracharya of Karveer Peetham to seek guidance on religious customs in a wedding ceremony following the demise of a parent. Ajit Pawar died in a plane crash on January 28 this year.

Patil sought the guidance of the seer on whether a wedding needed to be solemnised within one year of the death of a parent, failing which one would need to wait for the next three years. According to Patil, the Shankaracharya clarified that there was no such religious protocol. Meanwhile, the party has also clarified that Parth’s fiancée Kaynaat Dara, to whom he is getting married to Kaynaat Dara on February 27 next year, is not Kashmiri as reported by a section of the media but originally from Chandigarh and currently based in Delhi.