Ajit says nobody upset in his party over Sunetra’s RS nomination

Mumbai: Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar on Friday denied any unrest in his party over the Rajya Sabha membership of his wife Sunetra Pawar. He claimed that his opponents and “some close associates” are deliberately planting ”false news”.

According to reports, senior NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal, former Congress minister Baba Siddiqui and others were also interested in getting the Rajya Sabha seat. However, Ajit Pawar said that it was the party’s parliamentary board’s decision to nominate Sunetra Pawar for the RS seat.

“No one is upset. Chhagan Bhujbal and Praful Patel already cleared that our parliamentary board had decided this,” The NCP leader said.

Sunetra Pawar will be elected unopposed as she is the only candidate in the fray after the deadline for filing the nominations was over at 3pm on Wednesday. “Today we got to know that the nomination has been accepted also and if no other contestants come before the last day then this can be an unopposed election,” Ajit said.

Reacting to an article in the ‘Organizer’ article which claimed that the BJP’s alliance with Ajit Pawar was responsible for its debacle in Lok Sabha elections in Maharashtra, Ajit said, A lot of leaders are expressing their views and opinions after the election results. In democracy, everyone has a right to express their opinion. My focus is on development work. My attempt will be on facing the assembly polls with new energy as Mahayuti.”

Bhujbal also backed Ajit and said that he cannot be held responsible for the electoral defeat of the NCP and the Mahayuti.

“We (NCP) were given only four seats out of the 48 seats in Maharashtra. Of those four seats, two were taken away from us. So effectively we contested only two seats and won the Raigad Lok Sabha seat. BJP lost in other states as well, such as Uttar Pradesh. Nobody thought that BJP would lose so many seats in Uttar Pradesh. So, blaming Ajit Pawar is not right,” Bhujbal said.

Ajit also acknowledged that discontent among onion growers hurt Mahayuti. He said the Shiv Sena-BJP-NCP alliance had to ‘pay the price” for discontent among farmers in the onion growing belt of the state, including Nashik, where the ruling coalition fared poorly in the polls. He said the interest of both farmers and consumers should be protected.