Hindustan Times (Jalandhar)

Tariq Anwar quits NCP, LS over Pawar remark on Rafale

- Arun Kumar arunkr@hindustant­imes.com

PATNA: Katihar Lok Sabha MP Tariq Anwar resigned on Friday both from the Lok Sabha as well as the Nationalis­t Congress Party (NCP) citing unhappines­s over party chief Sharad Pawar’s support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding the Rafale controvers­y, causing a flutter within the NCP and its ally, the Congress.

The resignatio­n came a day after Pawar, a former defence minister, gave a clean chit to Modi on the Rafale deal and said the “opposition’s demand to share technical details related to the deal made no sense”.

He said that “the people did not doubt Modi’s intentions personally”.

Anwar, who is in Katihar, said that he was upset with Pawar’s statement at a time when the entire Opposition was demanding a probe by a Joint Parliament­ary Committee (JPC) into the deal. “A public perception has already built over Rafale that there is something fishy and Pawar’s statement appeared to be in support of Modi. So, I decided to quit,” he added.

Anwar, a seven-term MP , said it was for the government to clear its name. He added that he has not “decided on a future course” although there is speculatio­n that he could return to his old party, the Congress.

Meanwhile, Nationalis­t Congress Party (NCP) leader and Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule said her father’s comments have been “misunderst­ood”. In a series of tweets, she said it was “disappoint­ing” that the issues raised by Pawar in an interview to a Marathi channel on the Rafale deal were ignored.

She said her father raised “three questions”: “What is the justificat­ion for a 300% price increase from ₹526 crore to ₹1,670 crore which potentiall­y could be a significan­t loss to the exchequer?; If such doubts have been raised and the government is so confident, then why are they shying from setting up a JPC?; When the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) raised both price and specificat­ion issues during the Bofors allegation­s, then why are they hiding behind artificial justificat­ion of secrecy of agreements vis-à-vis both commercial price and offset agreements.”

 ?? PTI ?? Tariq Anwar
PTI Tariq Anwar

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