NCP rejects rift talk after six senior leaders meet Amit Shah; Sunetra Pawar says party is united

The Nationalist Congress Party on Monday rejected reports of a rift in its ranks after six of its senior leaders called on Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Delhi. The party said the meeting had been planned in advance, was formal in nature and was held with the knowledge of its president, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Sunetra Pawar.

The delegation that met Shah consisted of Praful Patel, Sunil Tatkare, Dilip Walse Patil, Hasan Mushrif, Chhagan Bhujbal and Dhananjay Munde. Neither Sunetra Pawar nor Rajya Sabha MP Parth Pawar was among them, and that absence set off speculation about who was steering the party. The visit also came at a time when the NCP has been pressing for the finance portfolio in Maharashtra to come back to it, a demand it has raised since the death of Ajit Pawar. Questions were therefore asked about whether talks were being held without the top leadership.

The party's national chief spokesperson, Umesh Patil, answered these reports in a statement. He described the claim that discussions were held by leaving out Sunetra Pawar and Parth Pawar as "completely wrong, baseless and misleading".

Patil said the two had themselves met Shah earlier, after Ajit Pawar's death, and had taken up several matters concerning the party. At that meeting, he said, Sunetra Pawar told the Home Minister that a delegation of senior leaders would call on him and asked him to set aside time for it. Monday's meeting, in his account, was the follow-up to that request.

The spokesperson explained why these particular leaders were chosen. According to him, they have in-depth knowledge of important matters from Ajit Pawar's time in office, of issues touching the interests of Maharashtra and of the party's various concerns. During the meeting they also raised problems from their own constituencies. They held informal conversations as well with counterparts from the Mahayuti alliance, and exchanged views on matters related to it.

Patil rejected any suggestion of a split. He said an effort was under way to give a formal meeting an undeserved political colour, so that a narrative of internal differences and poor coordination could be built. He said: "The Nationalist Congress Party is an important constituent of the Mahayuti, and our party is functioning united and in unison under the firm leadership of national president Sunetra Pawar."

He went further and blamed unnamed players for the reports. "It appears that some invisible forces are planting such news so that an artificial picture is created that there are internal differences in the NCP and no coordination in the leadership. This is sheer mischief," he said.

Patil appealed to the public and the media to check the facts before publishing or broadcasting anything about the party's internal affairs. He cautioned against presenting speculation as established information and against painting a picture of conflict on that basis alone. He also urged that formal meetings between leaders of allied parties should not be politicised, and asked people to tell planted news apart from the actual facts.

The party's core committee is scheduled to meet at 4 pm on Monday at Ajit Pawar's Devgiri residence in Mumbai.

This is not the first time Sunetra Pawar has had to address talk of discord. On Friday she denied that there were differences in the party. "There were no differences among us. In an election there is victory and defeat. If there is a defeat, there is a need for introspection. We will certainly introspect," she said.

She was speaking after the NCP lost in the Maharashtra Legislative Council election a few days earlier. In the Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar graduates' constituency, the party's candidate, Satish Chavan, a three-time sitting MLA, was beaten by Pratapsingh Patil of the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar).