New Delhi: A day after Ajit Pawar took oath as the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, claiming he had the support of most Nationalist Congress Party MLAs, the section of the party under his uncle Sharad Pawar has moved a disqualification petition with the Maharashtra assembly speaker Rahul Narwekar.
Ajit’s action to split the party had apparently come as a surprise to Sharad, who later said at a press conference, “Many have been restless following the ED investigations against them…and now I see them go with Ajit Pawar.”
Sharad had thus implied that some of the nine ministers who joined the Bharatiya Janata Party and Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde) government were escaping central agency action by joining hands with the government.
However, he had also said that the party will not take the route of the courts.
Talking to reporters in Mumbai today July 3, senior NCP leader Jayant Patil said, “The nine MLAs of the NCP were sworn in as ministers. We have filed a disqualification petition for those nine MLAs with the assembly speaker through email. We have also written to ECI (Election Commission of India). We have informed them that the nine MLAs have acted against the NCP’s position. This has been done to prevent anyone coming to stake claim on our party.”
Indian Express noted that it is unlikely that speaker Narwekar will respond to this email.
“For a year now, Narwekar has been sitting on a petition moved by the Uddhav Thackeray Sena against 16 MLAs of the united Shiv Sena who defected with Eknath Shinde to form the government with the BJP. It’s been more than a month since the Supreme Court directed Narwekar to take a decision, without the Speaker showing any visible movement on the issue,” the report said.
Meanwhile, a cloud continues to be on how the NCP will function and which faction is the one that has aligned with the ruling parties.
Praful Patel, who was sworn in among NCP MLAs yesterday, told NDTV that the NCP is one and Sharad Pawar is still its leader.
“We are one party and Sharad Pawar is our leader. Nobody has defected or broken away from the party. Sometimes there are differences within the party and it gets resolved. You wait for some more days and you’ll see what I mean,” he said.
Patel also purportedly got angry when asked if he had abandoned Sharad Pawar’s party.
In February this year, the Enforcement Directorate had attached the properties connected to Patel – including four floors of the prime property of Ceejay House in Mumbai’s Worli – in the Iqbal Mirchi case.
As The Wire has reported, Patel is one of five NCP leaders who have taken oath and are facing charges by central agencies.
Of them are Aditi Sunil Tatkare whose father, MP Sunil Tatkare, has been named for alleged corruption in the Kondhane dam construction project by the Maharashtra state Anti-Corruption Bureau. Also in the list are Hasan Mushrif and Chhagan Bhujbal, who are named in separate money laundering cases, and Ajit Pawar himself who has been under the lens over a case related to the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank.