Pune:
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar on Tuesday said his decision to join the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance was not coercion or compromise, adding that his idea of development is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision.
In a candid conversation with news agency ANI, in which he shared his thoughts in the run-up to building a rival NCP alliance with his loyalists and eventually joining the ruling NDA in the state as deputy chief minister, Mr Pawar said: “ There was no coercion and there was no compromise. I always think about development. Who is the driving force behind the country's development today? I worked against him in 2014 and 2019 (Lok Sabha elections), but if you see today, and As Prime Minister Modi himself said yesterday (while on the campaign trail in Maharashtra), we have done the same amount of work in one year as we did in the ten years under (former Prime Minister) Manmohan Singh. He has also worked for the upliftment of welfare of the poor and backward sections of the population. In the last 10 years, not a single accusation has been leveled against Prime Minister Modi.”
NCP patriarch Sharad Pawar's nephew created another seismic event in the landscape of Maharashtra politics on July 2 last year, galvanizing a rival faction, which aligned itself with the BJP-led NDA.
Ajit Pawar took oath as deputy chief minister for the fifth time.
He alleged that the opposition bloc – INDIA – did not have a Prime Minister's face and said there was no one who could match PM Modi in terms of leadership and popularity.
“More than 65 percent of people in the country say they want Prime Minister Modi to return for a third term. There was a lot of talk in 2019 around Nitish Kumar (competing with Prime Minister Modi for the most powerful post in the country), but he is currently the opposition has no one to take on Prime Minister Modi. There is simply no comparison between him and Rahul Gandhi,” the NCP leader said.
The deputy CM said the ruling 'Mahayuti' (alliance of the BJP, the Shiv Sena under Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar's NCP) was formed to take forward the state's agenda of 'development'.
“Everyone (in their NCP faction) took the decision (to join the NDA) collectively. It was not motivated by the desire to be ministers but to advance the agenda of Maharashtra's development. I have said this time and again that the decision was in the interest of development and nothing else,” Ajit Pawar said.
He added that people across the country have decided to bring back the BJP-led NDA under Prime Minister Modi for a third term at the Center.
“The people give Prime Minister Modi a thrilling welcome wherever he goes. He has asked the people to express their electoral support for his vision and development agenda. He told people why they should vote for us. It is clear that the people have decided to bring him back for a third term,” the deputy CM said.
A total of eleven Lok Sabah seats in Maharashtra will go to polling in the third phase on May 7.
Of the 48 seats, 13 were voted on in the first and second phases.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)