PM Modi queried if BJP, NCP can work together: Sharad Pawar

MUMBAI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi approached the Nationalist Congress Party to form an alliance with the BJP after the Shiv Sena refused to support a BJP government in Maharashtra, NCP president Sharad Pawar has said. In an interview to a Marathi news channel telecast on Monday, Pawar said that when he was getting up to leave — after his meeting on November 20 with the PM to seek central assistance for farmers who had suffered huge crop losses due to unseasonal rains — Modi inquired whether the two parties could work together.
“I was about to get up from the meeting and the PM said, ‘we can work together, I would be happy’. I told him, ‘our personal relations are good and it would continue to be, but we working together is not politically possible’. The PM told me that our views were not different and that on many issues like development, industrialisation, agriculture, we were not different.”

Pawar also said not swearing in Ajit Pawar when Uddhav Thackeray took oath as CM on November 28 was a conscious decision prompted by Ajit’s sudden support to Devendra Fadnavis. “When I came to know about Ajit's support, the first person I contacted was Thackeray. I told him what happened was not right and promised him that I would crush the rebellion. When everyone in NCP came to know that Ajit did not have my support, there was pressure on those 5-10 MLAs who were with him,” he said.

The NCP chief said he was not aware if anyone in his family spoke to Ajit Pawar to make him reverse his decision to support Fadnavis. “But all in the family felt what Ajit did was wrong. I later told him what he did was unpardonable. And whoever it was had to bear the consequences, and he was no exception. However, there is a big section which has faith in him. He gets things done.” Pawar said that the early swearing in of Devendra Fadnavis was because Ajit had put a condition to the BJP that he would join the government if the swearing in was done immediately. He also said that he had convinced Congress president Sonia Gandhi of supporting the Shiv Sena and gave instances of Sena’s support to the Congress, including the Emergency.