Sharad Pawar Denies Raj Thackeray’s Allegations of Scripting BJP-Sena Split

Oct 04, 2014 Tushita Politics 0

A day after MNS chief Raj Thackeray’s accused that the NCP chief Sharad Pawar of having engineered the split between BJP and Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party chief came forward to deny the allegation.

“Sharad Pawar had told BJP leaders that he will also snap ties with Congress after they break up their alliance with Sena and this is how it happened exactly,” Mr. Thackeray had alleged earlier.

Talking to the media at a campaign rally on Thursday, the MNS chief had claimed that Pawar had conveyed to the BJP leaders that the NCP would break ties with the Congress if they broke their alliance with the Sena.

When on September 26 the BJP finally decided to part ways with old ally Shiv Sena, and made an announcement in this regard, the NCP announced its decision to break the alliance, within one hour.

However, addressing the media in Pune on Friday, Pawar denied the charge. “I played no role whatsoever in the Sena-BJP break up. I must thank Raj Thackeray for portraying me as a leader who can influence the decisions of a rival national party. We announced our decision to break the alliance with the Congress the same day because there wasn’t much time left. With only 24 hours to go for the nomination filing deadline, we had to announce our decision so that we could file nominations for all Assembly constituencies,” said Pawar.

Pawar went on to say that he did not anticipate that the NCP would be forced to take the extreme step, as Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and several other senior Congress leaders had appeared “extremely positive” about continuation of the Congress-NCP alliance in Maharashtra.

“When I met Sonia Gandhi, she was extremely positive about the continuation of the alliance in the state. Several other senior leaders also shared her feelings. We also had several rounds of meetings with national leaders and state leaders. However, while these talks were on, we learnt that the Congress had announced a list of 110 candidates, which also contained names of constituencies which we had demanded. This showed their intentions, so we did not have any other option but to fight alone,” said Pawar, adding that the party had prepared to contest only 130-135 seats and, hence, had to do a lot of running around at the last moment to field candidates from all constituencies.

Pawar also said the Narendra Modi wave would not be a factor and ruled out a post-poll alliance with the BJP.

India, Lock Sabha Election, Maharashtra alliances breakup, Maharashtra Assembly polls, MNS, NCP, ock sabha, politics, Raj Thackeray campaign, regional elections, Shivraj Chavan

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Tushita

Tushita is a political writer at thenational.net. Her deep rooted interest in politics, passion for writing and craze for travelling define her. Writing since her school days, she aspires to write lifelong and make the world a happier place to live with the power of her pen.