As Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar on Tuesday stepped down from his position, emotional party workers and leaders begged the four-time Maharashtra chief minister to withdraw his decision and said they wouldn’t leave the venue unless he did so.
Sharad Pawar announced his resignation as the chief of the NCP at the launch of the second edition of his autobiography in Mumbai.
Party cadre raised slogans demanding that Pawar withdraw his decision. Some of them even broke down after he announced his decision to quit as NCP chief.
Senior NCP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Praful Patel said Sharad Pawar did not take anyone into confidence before announcing his resignation. “There were no talks about Sharad Pawar’s resignation in the party. I asked him, why did he not consult us? All the prominent leaders of the party will go to him and will try to persuade him to reverse his decision,” said Patel.
Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) MP Sanjay Raut, who is considered very close to Pawar, compared the 82-year-old with Balasaheb Thackeray and said the latter too had resigned from the chief’s post “fed up with dirty politics and allegations.”
NCP workers demanded that his daughter Supriya Sule speak to her father and urge him to reconsider his decision. But Pawar’s nephew Ajit Pawar intervened and asked his cousin not to speak about anything.
“I am her elder brother and that is why I am giving her this suggestion,” Ajit Pawar said.
“Pawar Saheb himself had said about the necessity of change in guard a few days ago. We should see his decision in the light of his age and health. Everyone has to take a decision according to time, Pawar Saheb has taken a decision and he won’t take it back,” ANI quoted Ajit Pawar as saying.
Ajit Pawar, who has not hidden his chief ministerial ambitions, recently said that his party is ready to stake claim to the Maharashtra chief minister’s post at any point of time instead of waiting for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
In an interview to the Sakal Media Group, Ajit Pawar revealed that his colleague late RR Patil would have become Chief Minister in 2004 when the NCP had won more Assembly seats than its ally Congress, but a message came from Delhi that his party will get the deputy CM’s post.
Sule also backed her cousin over his statement that he was ready to become the chief minister, saying that there was nothing wrong in harbouring ambitions in politics.
“There is nothing wrong to have ambition or a dream in politics, every politician has it, so I don’t think that there is anything wrong in saying it openly. In fact, he (Ajit) is very honest in speaking about his ambition,” Sule told the media in Pune.
Amid speculations that Ajit Pawar and some party MLAs might join the BJP, Sharad Pawar had last week said that said if someone is trying to break away, a “firm stand” will be taken.
Ajit Pawar also rejected the claims.
Sharad Pawar, who, after being expelled from the Congress, founded NCP in 1999 and was the party’s first president, also served as the Minister of Defence in the Cabinet of PV Narsimha Rao and Minister of Agriculture in the Cabinet of Manmohan Singh.