Rohit Pawar says BJP trying to drive wedge between Parth and Jay Pawar; Tatkare denies charge

There is intense political churning within the Ajit Pawar faction of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) these days. It is being said that a clash between Deputy Chief Minister Sunetra Pawar, who firmly took charge of the party after the death of Ajit Pawar, along with Parth Pawar, and the party's senior leaders has once again come into the open. Against this backdrop, MLA Rohit Pawar has made a serious allegation against the BJP.

The background is that a group of senior leaders of the Ajitdada faction recently went to Delhi and met Union Home Minister Amit Shah. According to talk doing the rounds, the leaders expressed their displeasure to Shah over Parth Pawar's functioning. The NCP's Sunil Tatkare, Praful Patel, Dilip Walse Patil and Dhananjay Munde met Shah in Delhi at nine on Sunday night. The meeting lasted about two hours.

Responding to this, Rohit Pawar said in an interview on Tuesday that the BJP, taking some leaders of the Ajitdada faction along, is trying to create bitterness between Parth Pawar and Jay Pawar. In Rohit Pawar's words, he has learnt that Jay Pawar had met the Chief Minister. He said that just as the BJP, directly and indirectly, got the uncle (Sharad Pawar) and the nephew (Ajit Pawar) to quarrel, it is now working to get the two brothers, Jay Pawar and Parth Pawar, to quarrel in the coming days.

Rohit Pawar claims that an effort to create a difference in political outlook between Parth and Jay Pawar has already begun. According to him, the same leaders who went to Delhi to meet Amit Shah the day before are helping in this. He said that, barring Chhagan Bhujbal and Hasan Mushrif, the rest of the leaders would not stop short of setting these two brothers against each other once they listened to the BJP. All of this is Rohit Pawar's allegation.

NCP state president Sunil Tatkare has responded to the allegation. Tatkare was part of the delegation of senior leaders who met Amit Shah in Delhi. He denied Rohit Pawar's allegations. Tatkare said Rohit Pawar is making such statements only to stay in the news and to draw people's attention to himself. According to him, Rohit Pawar says something or other about him every day, but they do not pay attention to those statements.

Meanwhile, an important meeting of NCP MLAs was held on Tuesday night at the Devgiri bungalow in Mumbai. Thirty of the party's MLAs were present. The MLAs complained that although their party is in power, work is not getting done. Some MLAs complained that work was not being done from Eknath Shinde's side. The MLAs also said that they at the grassroots level get to know nothing about the disputes going on among the senior leaders. They also expressed the feeling that the party is being weakened as accounts of the tussle among senior leaders keep coming out in public.