Plane speaking: CM Shinde offers state aircraft to fly Ajit Pawar to Mumbai

Ajit Pawar. File Photo

In a rare gesture that bonds the Opposition and ruling parties, in a pleasant change from the fights in the Legislature, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde offered the Opposition leader in the Assembly, Ajit Pawar, to fly on the state government aircraft from Nagpur to Mumbai on Wednesday.

According to information, Pawar was supposed to fly on a commercial airliner on Wednesday morning. He requested Shinde to postpone the business advisory meeting (that decides the proceedings of the legislature) because it clashed with his flight schedule. However, Shinde convinced Pawar to stay back for the meeting and offered him a flight on the state aircraft that is exclusively used by the CM and the governor Pawar accepted.

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People in the know said it was perhaps for the first time that a CM had granted such an allowance to a political opponent. There have been instances of ministers and leaders flying with the CM in the state-owned aircraft, they said, recalling an instance in which governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari was not permitted to use the same aircraft a year ago. Later in the day, in Mumbai, Pawar, along with several other Nationalist Congress Party leaders and host of party workers, received former home minister Anil Deshmukh, who was released on bail from jail.