BJP sought an alliance post 2019 polls, but NCP declined: Sharad Pawar

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar has claimed that the BJP had approached him for an alliance post the Maharashtra Assembly elections after its tie-up with the Shiv Sena broke off, but that he had declined the offer.

“It is true that there was a discussion about an alliance between our two parties. The prime minister said we should think about it…However, I told him right in his office that it was not possible and I would not like to keep them in the dark,” Pawar was quoted as saying at the launch of Ashtadhvani, a coffee table book published by Marathi daily Loksatta, on Wednesday.

Also read: What’s behind Sena’s newfound bonhomie with Congress?

The BJP and the Shiv Sena, which were in an alliance before the 2019 elections, parted ways after a disagreement over sharing the chief minister’s post. Despite emerging as the single largest party, the BJP couldn’t form government due to insufficient seats after the split with the Sena and wanted the support of the NCP. The NCP, however, agreed to join hands with the Shiv Sena and Congress to form the Maha Vikas Agadhi government with Uddhav Thackeray as the chief minister-designate.

However, in a dramatic twist, the BJP got Devendra Fadnavis sworn in as the chief minister and NCP’s Ajit Pawar as his deputy at Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari’s residence in a hush-hush ceremony. Pawar had distanced himself and his party from his nephew Ajit Pawar’s decision, and said that it was his personal choice and not the party’s. Ajit Pawar had later returned to the NCP, retaining his post as deputy chief minister in the MVA government.

Answering if he had sent Ajit Pawar to form government with Fadnavis, Pawar said, if he had done so, he would have kept the promise and continued with the alliance with the saffron party.

He said the BJP must have mulled an alliance with the NCP not only because of its break up with the Sena, but also because the relationship between the NCP and the Congress was strained at that time.

Defending Uddhav Thackeray’s decision to call it quits with the BJP, a longtime ally of the Shiv Sena, Pawar said it was because “what was decided between him (Thackeray) and BJP was not being implemented.”

He said the NCP’s support for the Sena was also driven by its respect for the late Balasaheb Thackeray.

Commenting on the BJP’s prospects in winning the highly-anticipated Uttar Pradesh elections slated for next year, Pawar said there is no “clear-cut winner” on the horizon. He, however, said that the party is serious about retaining power in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s highest populated state, and it was evident in the way Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently visited the state to announce a slew of projects.

Asserting that states like Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh play a vital role in cementing a party’s national footprints, Pawar said it was a sensible decision by Modi to have contested from Varanasi instead of his home state of Gujarat.

“Modi did the right thing by contesting the Lok Sabha poll from Varanasi…Because his decision, the people of Uttar Pradesh have rallied behind him…I contested 14 elections, seven of which were Lok Sabha polls, but I never thought of contesting from outside the state,” he said.

Praising the prime minister for having put in a lot of “hard work” and “paying a lot of attention to the administration”, Pawar said his government, however, lags in solving the problems of the general public.

Also read: How the BJP cut Fadnavis to size by rehabilitating sidelined rivals

“He is ready to put in a lot of hard work and give time…he believes in taking the task he has taken up to its logical conclusion. He pays a lot of attention to the administration. However, if the general public’s problems are not resolved, the impact will not be seen…I find him lagging here. He believes in strong implementation of policy decisions and he has his own style of taking his government forwards,” the NCP chief said.

In what seemed like a sly dig against the ED’s case against NCP leader and former home minister Anil Deshmukh, Pawar said he and former prime minister were against vendetta politics and despite pressure from other Cabinet members never supported the bloodlust against Modi, who was the then chief minister of Gujarat.