Pawar had said he would quit politics if the reports about his Delhi visit before the NCP forged an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2023 were proven, and if not, those raising such allegations should quit politics.
Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar chief Sharad Pawar turned the heat on his estranged nephew and deputy CM Ajit Pawar on Tuesday, virtually accusing him of breaking the family for his political ambitions.
Senior NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal has launched a veiled attack on party president Ajit Pawar, claiming that Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was in favor of his induction in the cabinet. Bhujbal expressed his disappointment and humiliation over his exclusion, alleging that he was treated like a "toy" by the party leadership. He also alleged that Ajit Pawar makes decisions for the NCP like Fadnavis does for the BJP and Eknath Shinde does for the Shiv Sena.
The case pertains to an alleged scam in the Sahakari Sakhar Kharkhana (co-operative sugar factories) and Sahakari Soot Girnis.
Sharad Pawar expressed surprise over the PM taking a "different stand" now.
Voters, it is said, get the government they deserve. We will soon see what voters in Maharashtra choose. Till then, a sense of helplessness and scepticism hangs in the air, notes Ramesh Menon.
Ajit Pawar also said he was "not interested" in contesting elections anymore.
Exigencies of electoral politics and individual ambitions often stoke family feuds and sibling rivalries.
Ajit Pawar criticised Patil, a senior BJP leader, for his remarks two days after polling in the Baramati Lok Sabha seat in Pune district concluded.
As the campaign for the Lok Sabha elections gathers momentum, Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray, the leaders of two prominent regional parties in Maharashtra, are fighting a battle for political survival.
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar on Thursday held a meeting of Nationalist Congress Party MLAs following his party's poor performance in the Lok Sabha polls.
Pawar tried to discourage party leader and state minister Dharmarao Baba Aatram's daughter Bhagyashri from crossing over to the Sharad Pawar-led NCP-SP.
The rout of Sharad Pawar-led faction has raised questions over his political future with a potential risk of a further slide in the party flock in future.
Amid parties accusing rivals of promoting dynastic politics, the November 20 Maharashtra assembly polls will see brothers, cousins and father-children in the fray, with members of the same family taking on each other in some seats.
Even as the two parties appeared confident that they have reached out to every voter and publicised their new symbols, experts suggested varying impact of the split and the symbols on the vote bank.
The respect for the four-time former chief minister, often referred to as Saheb, in his stronghold of western Maharashtra is palpable in much of the region. But his estranged nephew also appears to enjoy a stature of his own in Baramati, a constituency represented by the senior Pawar for six terms before he passed the baton to Ajit Pawar in 1991.
The third phase of polling will take place on May 7, 2024.
The states and union territories where the elections are being held in this phase are Assam (4), Bihar (5), Chhattisgarh (7), Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu (2), Goa (2), Gujarat (25), Karnataka (14), Maharashtra (11), Madhya Pradesh (8), Uttar Pradesh (10) and West Bengal (4). The BJP has bagged the Surat seat unopposed.
After they met in New Delhi on Wednesday, June 5, 2024, INDIA bloc leaders decided to sit in the Opposition for now...
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, who heads the Nationalist Congress Party, has said that helming the NCP away from the shadows of his uncle and founder Sharad Pawar after the split is a huge responsibility.
The Nationalist Congress Party on Sunday turned down the Bharatiya Janata Party's offer to accommodate Praful Patel as a minister of state with independent charge in the new National Democratic Alliance government and said it was assured that 'remedial measures' would be taken.
Now, with the INDIA bloc putting up an impressive show in the Lok Sabha polls and managing to stop the BJP juggernaut, opposition leaders will be looking at the senior Pawar for guidance in navigating the political space against the saffron party post-elections.
The Bharatiya Janata Party suffered a setback in Lok Sabha polls in Maharashtra on Tuesday, with its tally dwindling by less than half compared to 2019, while the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi of Congress, Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray and the Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar was on a roll, pocketing 30 of the 48 seats.
'I am shocked that the BJP makes so many commitments. What did they deliver as the NDA?'
A voter turnout of 60.19 per cent was recorded till 5 pm in the third phase of Lok Sabha elections in 93 constituencies spread over 11 states and Union Territories on Tuesday with sporadic incidents of violence in West Bengal.
Lok Sabha polls in Maharashtra will be held in five phases on April 19, April 26, May 7, May 13 and May 20. Counting of votes will be held on June 4.
The coming weeks are sure to have a lot of drama unfolding in Maharashtra, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Among the bigwigs are Union ministers Amit Shah (Gandhinagar), Jyotiraditya Scindia (Guna), Mansukh Mandaviya (Porbandar), Parshottam Rupala (Rajkot), Pralhad Joshi (Dharwad) and SP Singh Baghel (Agra).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, and Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar supremo Sharad Pawar were among the famous faces who queued up at the polling booths on Tuesday to caste their votes in the third phase of the Lok Sabha elections.
The stakes are significant for the BJP in this round as the party had in 2019 won an overwhelming majority of these seats, including all in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, that will go to polls on May 7.
The Nationalist Congress Party is livid as Shivtare continues to criticise Pawar, whose wife Sunetra is likely to contest from the Baramati Lok Sabha seat, even after meeting Shinde in Mumbai recently.
Pawar said he was upset that his three sisters were dragged into this.
A tough administrator and an immensely popular face in his largely rural assembly segment Baramti in Pune district, Ajit is also a maverick leader who doesn't shy from being on a different page from his party.
The ED said in a statement that it has attached the properties including land, building and structure and plant and machinery of Jarandeshwar Sahkari Sugar Karkhana at Chimangaon, Koregaon, Satara worth Rs 65,75,00,000 under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering in a case related to Maharashtra State Co-operative Bank (MSCB).
Pawar was the deputy CM twice in the 15-year regime of Congress-NCP alliance in Maharashtra during 1999-2014.
Nationalist Congress president Sharad Pawar, former Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar and Pawar senior's daughter and Lok Sabha MP from Baramati Supriya Sule were nowhere to be seen as Prime Minister Narendra Modi stormed into their family stronghold of Western Maharashtra's Baramati on Thursday
Did the fear of central agencies probing scams involving NCP leaders that forced these politicians to jump ship?
State BJP spokesman Keshav Upadhya termed it as "vendetta politics", while former chief minister Fadnavis said this would not impact his plans to travel and meet people.
2019 was the Bharatiya Janata Party's breakout year, when it stretched the boundaries of what was thought possible and ended up with 303 seats on its own steam. Now it is forced to play defence, on a pitch queered by too many variables, asserts Prem Panicker.
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