Fadnavis rubbishes Pawar's remark about financial aid to ruling party candidates

Pune: Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Saturday dismissed NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar's allegations that police vehicles are being used to provide financial assistance to candidates of the ruling parties ahead of the assembly polls.

Fadnavis is in Pune to meet key party workers ahead of the elections scheduled to be held on November 20.

Earlier in the day, Pawar claimed that police vehicles are being used to provide financial assistance to the candidates of the ruling parties in Maharashtra ahead of the assembly polls.

Addressing reporters in Baramati, Pawar said he wanted to speak more on the issue publicly but is refraining from doing so as this would hurt the officials who have shared the information with him.

Talking to reporters here, Fadnavis said the NCP (SP) chief is hallucinating because such things happened when the opposition parties were in power.

Fadnavis expressed confidence that NCP rebels in the Daund and Purandar seats will withdraw their candidature.

He further said that he has urged senior leader Gopal Shetty, who was denied a ticket from the Borivali seat in Mumbai, to think about the party.

Earlier this week, Shetty, a two-time Mumbai North Lok Sabha MP, said he would file his nomination papers from Borivali as his name did not figure in the fourth list of candidates announced by the BJP.

Shetty met Fadnavis after the party did not give him the party ticket from the Borivali seat.

Talking about the meeting, the deputy chief minister said, "He is our senior leader, and I have urged him to think about the party. He has abided by party discipline. I am sure he will do the same now. His anger is understandable."

Shetty, who won the Mumbai North Lok Sabha seat by margins of more than four lakh in 2014 and 2019, was denied a ticket in the 2024 general elections. Senior BJP leader and Union Minister Piyush Goyal won the seat.

The BJP named Sanjay Upadhyay as its candidate from Borivali. Shetty has filed his nomination papers as an Independent.