Sharad Pawar
The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar on Sunday ruled out becoming the chief ministerial candidate of the party for the upcoming Maharashtra Assembly elections. He said that the selection of the CM candidate would be made democratically once the verdict of the people comes in their favour.
Many NCP leaders have been demanding that Mr Pawar should once again lead the party for the Assembly elections. While addressing a gathering during the fifteenth anniversary celebration of the NCP at Shanmukhananda Hall, Mr Pawar said that some people had started demanding that he should become NCP’s CM candidate in Maharashtra, but it was a pointless exercise. “NCP has collective leadership and selection of the CM candidate will be made in a democratic way in case the verdict of the people comes in our favour,” Mr Pawar said. His remarks also indicated that Mr Pawar seems to be uninterested in announcing the CM candidate of the party before elections.
On Saturday, Jitendra Awhad, medical education minister made an open demand that the party chief should take the responsibility and become the face of the NCP in the state Assembly elections. Last week, in an interview given to a regional newspaper Ajit Pawar, the deputy chief minister has also expressed the need to announce a CM candidate before going to polls.
The NCP chief also said that he enjoyed the days earlier when his party was not in power. “During these days we are free to go and check the ground reality, while in government we depend upon bureaucrats, who are always of the view that all is well,” Mr Pawar said.
Mr Pawar also took on the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre referring to the death of a software professional Mohsin Shaikh in the backdrop of recent Facebook controversy. He said that certain ideologies awere trying to disturb the nation’s communal harmony after change of government at the Centre.
“Only few days have been passed since a party took over the reins of power with absolute majority. But certain people are endeavoring to hamper our communal harmony by hurting the sentiments of the people that led to communal disturbance in some places and murder of a innocent techie from the minority community,” the former agriculture minister said.