‘Deliberately offered BJP support post 2014 assembly elections’

While the Ashok Gehlot-led Congress gover nment in Rajasthan is in the throes of a crisis, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar asserted that the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) regime in Maharashtra was safe. In the third and final part of his interview to the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna, which was carried on Monday, Pawar rubbished the Bharatiya

Janata Party’s (BJP) repeated claims that the Uddhav Thackeray-led coalition gover nment in the state would collapse soon. “I am sure that, for five years, the gover nment will conduct the af fairs of the state in an excellent manner and Operation Kamal or whatever will not have any impact on Uddhav Thackeray’s gover nment,” he added.

Pawar declared that the three parties, which made up the MVA—the Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress—could contest the next elections together if they planned their strate gy well. “Operation Kamal means the brazen misuse of authority to weaken, destabilise gover nments with a popular mandate, and misuse the powers of the central gover nment to the hilt for this,” said Pawar, who was speaking to Shiv Sena Rajya Sabha Member of the Parliament (MP) and Saamna executive editor Sanjay Raut.

Pawar claimed that his statement after the 2014 assembly elections, wherein he said that the NCP was willing to support the BJP to for m the gover nment in Maharashtra, was made deliberately to create a distance between the Shiv Sena and the BJP.

The statement came when it became obvious that the BJP was the single largest party in the assembly, yet short of the halfway mark. NCP’s stance had significantly affected the Shiv Sena’s bargaining prowess, when it went to the negotiation table with the BJP. However, in the interview, Pawar claimed that he had made the statement on purpose to bring about a rift between the BJP and Shiv Sena. “…it is not in the interests of the Shiv Sena to let the BJP hold the reigns of the gover nment,” said Pawar, adding that this was because the BJP would wield authority in Delhi and the state. The BJP did not believe in the right of other parties to exist in a democracy, and would betray them, he charged.

It was said to cause a rift between BJP and Shiv Sena, says Pawar