Ajit Pawar faction leader urges BJP not to target Sharad Pawar

Vilas Lande, NCP leader from Pimpri Chinchwad, in a letter written to the Maharashtra BJP chief Chandrashekhar Bawankule, has said that the saffron party should immediately stop the condemnation of Sharad Pawar.

“People of Maharashtra will not tolerate the criticism of Sharad Pawar, who is the son of the soil of Pune district. We sincerely request you to stop blaming Pawar Saheb, who is also our idol and one of the respected leaders of the country,” Lande wrote in the letter.

During a BJP workers’ meet in Pune’s Balewadi on Sunday, Shah had criticized Sharad Pawar, calling him the “Corruption ka Sardar.” “If there is the biggest ‘sargana’ of corruption in Indian politics, it is Sharad Pawar. He has institutionalised corruption in this country,” the union home minister had said.

Incidentally, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar had responded with “no comments” when asked about Shah’s comments against his uncle.

Lande, a former MLA from Bhosari, said the repeated criticism of a respected figure like Sharad Pawar could harm BJP’s prospects in the Vidhan Sabha elections. He added that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “bhatakti aatma” criticism for Pawar cost the BJP and Mahayuti heavily in the Lok Sabha elections.

“There is a ‘bhatakti aatma’ (wandering soul) in Maharashtra. If it does not manage success, it spoils others’ good work. Maharashtra has been a victim of it,” Modi had said at a rally in Pune during the Lok Sabha election campaign.

The BJP suffered a severe setback in the Lok Sabha elections where the party’s tally plummeted to nine from 23 seats it had won in 2019. The opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) – comprising Shiv Sena (UBT), NCP (SP) and Congress – won 30 out of 48 seats in the state.