I did come back, with your people: Devendra Fadnavis to Sharad Pawar

Stung by NCP Chief Sharad Pawar's jibe on Thursday that despite Devendra Fadnavis promising to be back in 2019, he has still been unable to do so, the deputy CM said he did return with the blessings of the people, but some people betrayed the alliance. Pawar's initial barb was aimed at PM Narendra Modi who had stated in his I-Day speech that he would return to Red Fort next year.

Fadnavis said, "I did come back again in 2022 and also brought the entire party of ‘those people' along with me." State BJP president Chandrashekhar Bawankule said there will come a time when even Sharad Pawar will back PM Modi and his leadership that was taking the country forward. NCP chief Sharad Pawar, during a rally in Beed on Thursday, accused the BJP of destabilising duly elected governments in opposition-helmed states and said the policy of current rulers is to widen the wedge in society using caste, religion and language as tools.

Addressing a rally in Beed, the home district of rebel NCP leader and cabinet minister Dhananjay Munde, Pawar also slammed the Centre over the ethnic violence in Manipur. He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi should have gone to Manipur and understood the pain of people in the north-eastern state which has witnessed deadly ethnic clashes since early May.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar at a press conference in Aurangabad on Wednesday. Pic/PTI

Attacking the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the former Union minister said, "The policy of the current rulers is to widen the wedge in society using caste, religion and language as tools." The veteran politician accused the BJP of breaking duly elected governments in Opposition-ruled states even as it boasted about providing a stable government at the Centre. "You talk of providing a stable government but break duly elected governments in states," Pawar said.

The Rajya Sabha MP said Modi is following in the footsteps of his party colleague and Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis by including a ‘mi punha yein' (I'll come back again) element in his Independence Day speech. "Fadnavis did not return as CM (after 2019 assembly polls), but came back at a lower position. One wonders what will he [Modi] return as," he quipped.

Modi, during his Independence Day speech, had asserted that he will come back to the Red Fort to address the nation on August 15 next year, too, implying the BJP-led NDA alliance will win the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Ahead of the 2019 assembly polls in Maharashtra, then-chief minister Fadnavis had famously declared he will come back to the top post after the elections, but the BJP failed to retain power after the Shiv Sena (undivided) walked out of the saffron alliance and joined hands with the Congress and the NCP to form the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government.

Fadnavis served as the Leader of Opposition in the assembly after the MVA government assumed office in November 2019 and then took over as Deputy CM in June 2022 when Eknath Shinde became chief minister following a revolt in the Shiv Sena. On rising inflation, Pawar, a former Union agriculture minister, said rates of fertilisers have risen, but the government is not bothered about the issue which concerns farmers.

Inputs from Agencies