Anil Deshmukh questions Tatkare over merger remark as Sharad Pawar remains in hospital

Senior leader Sharad Pawar is undergoing treatment in hospital. Last night, NCP leader Praful Patel met Pawar and spoke to him for about an hour. This morning, NCP state president Sunil Tatkare said Ajit Pawar had put forward the idea of merging the two NCP parties. The statement caused a stir in political circles and reactions began to come in.

Anil Deshmukh, a leader of the Sharad Pawar faction and a former minister, put direct questions to Tatkare. Deshmukh said Ajitdada had fixed a date for the merger. He asked why Tatkare was rejecting it when the faction was saying then that a merger was going to happen, and what his purpose was in speaking of a merger now.

According to Deshmukh, meetings on a merger had been held between Ajit Pawar and Sharad Pawar, and there had been discussion that the two parties should come together. He said the faction was saying exactly this at the time, but Sunil Tatkare was saying that no such discussion had taken place, that Ajitdada had held the meetings for other reasons and had never said anything to him about a merger.

Deshmukh asked what had suddenly happened to Tatkare. He asked whose agenda Tatkare was running when he denied even the discussion then, which he said he did not know, on whose instructions he was speaking that way, and why he had now taken a different stand.

He asked why Tatkare had thought of a merger only today, and why he had not mentioned then the meeting of the two parties. According to him, the faction had even shown photographs. Deshmukh said there might be some new changes under way in Tatkare's party, or something was going on, and that was perhaps why he was speaking. He said the two parties were to have come together on 12 February, the date was fixed, and Tatkare had objected then.

Deshmukh said that in the present circumstances there is no question of the two parties coming together and that it is not easy to do so now. According to him, when the decision to come together was taken, these same people opposed it after Dada's death. He said he does not know what is going on inside their party; according to Deshmukh, that is that party's private matter.