Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar on September 27 hinted that the cause behind his nephew and senior party leader Ajit Pawar’s sudden and dramatic resignation as Baramati’s MLA may have been due to his uneasiness on seeing the NCP chief being named by the Enforcement Directorate in a case of alleged money laundering pertaining to the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank.
Speaking to reporters in Pune, Mr. Pawar further stressed that there was no rift within the Pawar clan and refuted suggestions that his nephew, Mr. Ajit Pawar may have quit owing to differences of opinion prevailing within the party and inside the Pawar family.
“He has not been in touch before his action of resigning nor after this despite numerous efforts to contact him. It is not in his nature to leave a fight,” said Mr. Sharad Pawar.
When questioned about whether Mr. Ajit Pawar was planning to exit from politics, the NCP supremo said he could clear the air only after meeting him and that he had not been able to contact him after his resignation.
“There is a custom in my house that the final decision is that of the family head [read Mr. Sharad Pawar]. Everyone in my family respects that. My family members work in different sectors, but they all abide by my decision,” said the 79-year-old NCP patriarch, stating that his family had always been united in the past and would continue to remain so in the future.
Mr. Sharad Pawar further said that he had learnt that Mr. Ajit Pawar was ostensibly disgusted with the low-level, below-the-belt of politics being currently practised in the State.
“After speaking with Parth Pawar (Ajit Pawar’s son), I understand that he (Ajit Pawar) advised his son not to venture into politics and concentrate instead on business and farming as he was frustrated with the state of politics that, he said, had stooped to a new low,” Mr. Sharad Pawar said.
“I believe he told his son that he was upset that such type of case [by the ED] was never registered against me [Sharad Pawar] in my 60 years of my public life,” Mr. Sharad Pawar said, adding that a similar case had been registered against him when he had participated in the ‘Kisan Morcha’ from Jalgaon to Nagpur in 1980 with Y.B. Chavan.
Remarking that he had not been able to get in touch with Ajit Pawar after his resignation, Mr. Sharad Pawar said he had been in communication with his nephew yesterday and that the latter had informed him about relief operations that he had been overseeing in Baramati.
He also refuted suggestions that Mr. Ajit Pawar was being sidelined within the party and had quit as a result of some perceived slight.
When asked how the resignation would affect the party’s morale, Mr. Sharad Pawar said the leadership was with every NCP worker and that the party was doing its utmost to change the political picture of Maharashtra.
“I am a fighter. I will fight because I know I have not done anything wrong. I know I am not a member of the bank. Whatever allegation is made against the working of the bank, it is mentioned that Mr. Pawar is an important member of the bank to whom others listen,” he said, speaking on his name being mentioned by the ED in the alleged money-laundering case.
Mr. Ajit Pawar, no stranger to such startling actions, had similarly and dramatically resigned from his post as Mahrashtra Deputy Chief Minister in September 2012, plunging the erstwhile Congress-NCP government into a crisis.
At the time, he had quit his Ministerial post following allegations of irregularities in his granting of project approvals totalling ₹20,000 crore over an eight-month period without the mandatory clearance of the governing council of the Vidarbha Irrigation Development Corporation (VIDC) when he was Water Resources Minister between 1999 and 2009.
However, after just 72 days in the political wilderness, Mr. Ajit Pawar was reinstated as Deputy Chief Minister with equal suddenness, despite the government failing to make any significant progress in its inquiry into the scam.
Published - September 27, 2019 09:31 pm IST
