Mumbai: Two dynasts of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) — the Nationalist Congress Social gathering’s (NCP) Rohit Pawar and the Congress’s Praniti Shinde — had a public spat final week over the Solapur parliamentary seat, sparking a battle between the 2 events’ native items in yet one more signal of stress throughout the alliance.
The battle was triggered by Rohit Pawar, NCP supremo Sharad Pawar’s grandnephew, saying that the leaderships of the Congress and the NCP would resolve who will get the Solapur seat within the 2024 Lok Sabha election. The youthful Pawar is a first-time MLA from Ahmednagar district’s Karjat-Jamkhed meeting constituency, whereas Shinde is a legislator from Solapur metropolis.
Solapur has historically been a Congress seat throughout the Congress-NCP alliance and in addition a celebration stronghold — Praniti Shinde’s father, former Maharashtra CM and Union house minister Sushilkumar Shinde, held the Lok Sabha seat for 3 phrases. The Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP) has, nonetheless, been making chinks on this fortress since 1996. Come 2019, the elder Shinde misplaced the seat to the BJP’s Jai Siddheshwar Shivachari Mahaswami.
In response to Pawar’s comment, Praniti Shinde mentioned he “hadn’t matured but”.
“Who’s Rohit Pawar? He’s a first-time MLA,” Shinde advised reporters final week. “Give him a while. Some individuals might be infantile”.
By Monday, nonetheless, the native items had determined to bury the hatchet. This was after higher-ups in each events directed them to not stretch the problem and to work collectively towards the Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP), based on Congress and NCP leaders ThePrint spoke to.
“We had tea along with the NCP leaders and determined to inform all our karyakartas to finish the spat and transfer ahead, work with one another and never towards one another,” Solapur Congress president Chetan Narote advised ThePrint.
The Pawar-Shinde battle is yet one more occasion of strife over seat sharing among the many MVA events — the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), the NCP, and the Congress — who had till 2019 been political rivals. The alliance additionally faces an inner rise up within the upcoming Kasba Peth and Chinchwad by-polls.
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‘If NCP asks for Solapur, ought to we ask for Baramati?’
In accordance with a Solapur-based Congress functionary, this isn’t the primary time Rohit Pawar has publicly mentioned the NCP was within the seat; he’d additionally spoken about it at a cricketing occasion two months in the past. However the Congress had determined to let it cross then, the functionary mentioned.
“The Congress has been robust right here for the previous 50 years. If the NCP asks for Solapur, ought to we then ask for Baramati?” the functionary requested.
Baramati is the house turf and bastion of the Pawar household, with Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule holding the parliamentary seat and his nephew Ajit Pawar representing the meeting constituency.
However after native NCP leaders grew extra aggressive in response to Shinde’s remarks, Rohit Pawar tried to douse the hearth himself by saying the Solapur legislator was like his “elder sister and has each proper to talk.”
“So allow us to spend our vitality to resolve right now’s principal drawback of unemployment with out arguing amongst ourselves,” Pawar mentioned in his tweet. “As for the query of Solapur seat, the senior leaders of each the events will take a call concerning it. I didn’t make any declare, I solely expressed the sentiments of the peculiar employees.”
Solapur NCP president Bharat Jadhav advised ThePrint that some enthusiastic employees had requested Pawar to place forth a proposal for the get together to get the constituency within the seat-sharing association for the 2024 basic election.
“He’d simply mentioned that the MVA management will take a call, however some native Congress leaders misunderstood,” Jadhav mentioned. “Our get together management advised us to not stretch the matter anymore, and we too have instructed our karyakartas to work with the BJP as our sole opponents.”
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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