Raut rules out NCP merger and says Sharad Pawar will not join NDA

Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut said on Sunday that the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar), led by Sharad Pawar, will not join the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. He also ruled out a merger of the two NCP factions. He was speaking to reporters in Mumbai, as speculation about the NCP's future has been building for about three days.

The talk gathered pace after Sunil Tatkare, president of the Ajit Pawar faction in Maharashtra, said that had Ajit Pawar been alive, the two factions would have merged in February this year. Senior NCP leaders have since called on Sharad Pawar, who was recently admitted to hospital with a chest infection. Praful Patel met the NCP (SP) chief at Breach Candy Hospital. Parth Pawar, son of the late Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, met Sharad Pawar twice within 48 hours, including a visit on Saturday to Silver Oak in South Mumbai. A video has also gone viral in which Sharad Pawar and Patel appear to discuss a possible meeting after November 10. All of this has added to the suspense.

Raut questioned who was actually pushing the merger idea. He asked: "Who is talking about a merger? Has Sharad Pawar spoken? Has Supriya Sule spoken? Has Shashikant Shinde spoken? Has Jayantrao Patil spoken?" He said people on the other side were now speaking unusually loudly because they were unhappy where they were, and that those who enjoy a red beacon on their cars may be content only for a while. Some political observers read his words as a reflection of what Pawar himself is thinking.

Raut said Pawar would not give up the political penance of so many years. He said Pawar would never go with bigoted forces or those who sell the country, and that Pawar has an ideology of his own which is not the BJP's. After Yashwantrao Chavan, he said, Pawar carried forward the thought of Shahu, Phule and Ambedkar. Anyone claiming Pawar will go with the BJP, Raut said, is a fool and is speaking after taking a contract. He asked why those who left Pawar had left in the first place.

On Tatkare, Raut said his words no longer carry weight even within his own party, which is why he was speaking on the merger. He said people should wait to hear from Pawar, and that he trusts Pawar more than anyone else.

Turning on the BJP, Raut said that staying with it means pledging one's self-respect and accepting helplessness. He suggested the Shinde faction could be asked about that, and alleged that the BJP treats its allies like domestic servants. "We walked out for the sake of self-respect at the right time," he said. He claimed the Ajit Pawar faction no longer has a leadership of its own and that Amit Shah, sitting in Delhi, is deciding the future of the party, as well as that of the Shinde faction. The developments, he said, should be watched as entertainment and not taken seriously.

Raut said he has no ideological relationship with the present BJP. He said: "Modi and Shah broke Balasaheb's party and handed it to people without standing. Why would we go to their door, pledging our self-respect, for a post?" Nothing of the kind would happen in the Shiv Sena, he said, and he alleged that the BJP spreads such rumours whenever it has no work or faces a hurdle.

Raut also took aim at Prime Minister Narendra Modi. On Sunday, Modi celebrated Diwali with security personnel at a CRPF camp in Bastar, Chhattisgarh, in keeping with his habit of marking festivals with the forces. Raut questioned the impact of such visits and said that spending a festival with jawans would not stop Chinese incursions or terror attacks like those at Pulwama and Pahalgam.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was criticised as well. Fadnavis spent Diwali with farmers in Lohari Savanga village in Nagpur on Saturday and Sunday. Raut called these visits a one-day event and said they would not solve farmers' problems, particularly when parts of the state face drought. He demanded concrete steps from the government and said its engagement with farmers should not be limited to festival visits. Ministers and government representatives, he added, should regularly visit the affected farmers.