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Ajit Pawar's NCP camp was ‘upset’ with Sharad Pawar? What MLAs said
Ajit Pawar, along with nine NCP MLAs, joined the Eknath Shinde-led government in Maharashtra and took oath as the deputy chief minister of the state.
Some of the MLAs who accompanied Nationalist Congress Party's (NCP) senior leader Ajit Pawar to the Raj Bhavan in Mumbai, ahead of the dramatic swearing-in ceremony on Sunday, said they were “upset” with the party chief Sharad Pawar’s “unilateral” decision to share the stage and ally with Congress Rahul Gandhi at the Opposition unity meeting in Patna last month, news agency ANI reported.
In a dramatic turn of events, Ajit Pawar, who is also Sharad Pawar's nephew, along with nine MLAs, reached the Raj Bhavan to meet Governor Ramesh Bais and joined the Eknath Shinde-led government in Maharashtra before taking oath as the deputy chief minister of the state.
Chief minister Eknath Shinde and his deputy Devendra Fadnavis were also present on the occasion.
The opposition leaders, including Sharad Pawar, had met at Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar's residence earlier to prepare an agenda for moving ahead together while working in the respective states to fight the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Nitish Kumar had termed the huddle a "good meeting" and added that the opposition parties had decided to fight the elections together. The huddle was also attended by opposition leaders including West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi, PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti, National Conference's Omar Abdullah.
Earlier, Ajit Pawar announced that he wanted to step down as Leader of the Opposition in Maharashtra and would like any party post.
"I was never interested in working as Leader of Opposition but accepted the role on demand of the party MLAs. Assign me any post in the party organisation and I will do complete justice to whatever responsibility given to me," Ajit Pawar had said at a party event in Mumbai.
On Sunday morning, a meeting of NCP leaders was called at the residence of Ajit Pawar and later he along with other party leaders reached the Raj Bhavan.
Meanwhile, Bharatiya Janata Party unit president Chandrashekhar Bawankule claimed that 40 MLAs of the NCP have supported the state government.
