Sharad Pawar (Photo: PTI)
NCP (SP) President Sharad Pawar on Monday recalled a 2016 statement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi about entering politics while holding the former’s finger and expressed surprise that the Prime Minister is now takes a “different point of view”.
Speaking at a rally in Baramati Lok Sabha constituency in Maharashtra’s Pune district ahead of the Assembly elections, Pawar also slammed Prime Minister Modi for ‘personal attacks’ and for taking action against those who have different ideologies.
“When I was the Union Agriculture Minister, I helped Gujarat a lot when Modi was the chief minister of the state. I did not see which party he belonged to. I saw that farmers in his state needed to be made happy and so I helped him “, he said. said.
“One day he told me he wanted to come to Baramati. In his speech he said, Pawar Saheb had held my finger and taught me to do the (development) work that I have done so far. But today he has a different opinion. ” said the NCP (SP) chief.
If anyone criticizes personally or takes a different stand, he will be jailed, Pawar said, citing the cases of former Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal.
“Is this democracy? No, it is dictatorship,” he said.
“When power comes into the hands of an individual, it gets corrupted. When power is in the hands of more people, it cannot go wrong,” Pawar said.
Referring to Maharashtra deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis’s recent comments that the fight for Baramati is not between Pawar and Pawar but between Prime Minister Modi and Rahul Gandhi, the NCP (SP) chief quipped whether the Congress leader was coming to Baramati to look for votes.
“Is he coming here to look for votes? Is Modi coming here? Now this is something new. They are not talking about voting for Maharashtra; they are talking about Modi or Gandhi. For me, this election is about seeing how the collective power of voters here can pave the way for good work at the national level,” he said.
Speaking about his cousin and Maharashtra deputy CM Ajit Pawar’s decision to join hands with the BJP, he said some people took an extreme step and asked who pushed them to take that step.
“Today, the BJP is not a party that is concerned about the common people and farmers in rural areas. The party consists of a handful of people, so the common voters did not vote (for the Ajit Pawar-led NCP) to join the BJP,” he said. said.
In the last state assembly polls, the people of Baramati voted with all their hearts and the voting was done in the name of the (then undivided) NCP, the former Union minister said.
“Today, some people have forgotten that fact and are taking a different path. I think this is the wrong path. You have to stop walking that path, and people have to choose the right path,” he said.
Fighting for his daughter and sitting Baramati MP Supriya Sule, the NCP (SP) nominated candidate, Sharad Pawar said there is no need for him to talk about the candidate as Parliament speaks on her behalf.
“Supriya’s name is among the three parliamentarians who did an excellent job with a voter turnout of 90 percent. So far, no one has made a single accusation against her. I nominated her to argue your side in parliament. I would like to ask you to do that. vote for the new symbol (of his party after the NCP split), ‘man blowing tutari’, which has reached the grassroots level in the constituency,” he said.
In Baramati, Sule is pitted against Ajit Pawar’s wife and NCP candidate Sunetra Pawar.
The elections to the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra will be held in five phases from April 19 to May 20.
Elections will be held in Baramati on May 7.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
First print: April 8, 2024 | 1:35 PM IST