As former NCP minister Anil Deshmukh walked out of jail on Wednesday after more than a year, at least one more party leader gathered around him made news. Present to receive Deshmukh was Leader of Opposition Ajit Pawar, having made it on time courtesy an aircraft provided by the state government.
Trailing behind was that old lingering question: was the gesture by the Shinde Sena-BJP government for Pawar Junior just a courtesy?
Pawar himself downplayed the issue. “I had requested Chief Minister Eknath Shinde to postpone a Business Advisory Committee meeting by a day. When he asked the reason, I told him about travelling to Mumbai (to visit Anil Deshmukh). He offered to bring forward the meeting, and said I could go to Mumbai by a government aeroplane later in the day,” he said.
However, the explanation, not surprisingly, did not sit well with the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition, including Pawar’s own party, bristling still from the Shinde Sena-BJP’s toppling of its government. Pawar’s unquestioning acceptance of Shinde’s offer is also being seen with suspicion given the NCP leader’s wavering loyalty since the 2019 election’s inconclusive result left all doors open.
Few have forgotten how Pawar had left the fledgling MVA side to surface beside the BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis, even taking oath as Deputy CM to Fadnavis’s CM in an early-morning exercise. That arrangement had lasted just three days, but the impression about Pawar’s proximity to Fadnavis has persisted, with only Sharad Pawar’s seniority keeping voices about his nephew within the MVA muted.
The uneasiness over Ajit Pawar was also visible in the Assembly session last week after NCP state president and senior MLA Jayant Patil was suspended from the House for the rest of the session, for telling Speaker Rahul Narvekar to not act like “a shameless person”. While Patil refused to apologise over the same, Pawar promptly did so.
Next morning, Sharad Pawar, the NCP supremo, is believed to have pulled up Ajit Pawar, asking why he allowed the suspension of Patil to go through. But even then, Ajit Pawar has only once requested since then that the suspension be revoked, acquiescing quietly when Fadnavis told the House that a decision would be taken after Shinde returned from Delhi.
Patil and Ajit Pawar are seen as competitors within the NCP, and the former is believed to have been in the reckoning for the LoP’s post that went to Pawar.
There are also murmurs over the fact that the Pawar-led Opposition’s target in the House seem to be exclusively Shinde Sena leaders. This session, four of them have been facing attacks, , including Shinde, Agriculture Minister Abdul Sattar, Industries Minister Uday Samant and Food and Drug Administration Minister Sanjay Rathod. Some leaders suggest that the BJP, especially Fadnavis, has been providing information against the Shinde group ministers to the NCP.
On Wednesday though, Fadnavis was seen aggressively defending Sattar over allegations regarding Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) and land regularisation scams.
MVA leaders in private also question Pawar’s strategy of boycotting the House proceedings after raising the said allegations, thus leaving the field clear for the ruling side to provide explanations. Sources confirmed that MVA partners Congress and Uddhav Sena had decided to not let the House function, demanding Sattar’s resignation. However, after raising the issue, Pawar appeared to accept the explanation given by Fadnavis without protest.
The Congress, in fact, has noticeably stayed away from active participation throughout the Winter Session in such Opposition attacks. A former Congress minister of state, who skipped the session for a week, did not deny that the party’s “indifference” was deliberate. “Isn’t it out in the open, for everyone to see?” he said, adding that not only were just Shinde’s ministers being targeted, the focus seems to be on those considered “difficult”.
A senior Congress leader and former Chief Minister said that the “bonhomie” between Pawar and Fadnavis was evident. At the same time, he was in favour of sticking together as Opposition, he said, “as the charges would still damage the ruling side”.
While the Congress’s displeasure at the MVA’s functioning as Opposition is muted, the Uddhav Shiv Sena has barely contained its displeasure.
Reduced to just 16 MLAs due to the Shinde-led rebellion, the Uddhav Sena is a very junior partner in the MVA coalition now, especially in the House, where Ajit Pawar holds sway as the Leader of the Opposition — a situation that cannot be to its liking.
“We are doing our job as Opposition against the unconstitutional government of Maharashtra. I don’t know about anything else ,” Ambadas Danve, the Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Council, and Uddhav Sena leader, said when asked about Pawar using a government flight.
