Gautam Adani was part of BJP-NCP alliance talks ‘5 years ago’, Ajit Pawar reveals in
Gautam Adani was part of BJP-NCP alliance talks ‘5 years ago’, Ajit Pawar reveals in interview
M.U.H
12/11/202438
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar has revealed that industrialist Gautam Adani was part of a crucial meeting between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the undivided Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) “five years back”. Ajit was referring to the developments that allegedly took place before the early morning ceremony when BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis was sworn in as chief minister and himself (then part of the undivided NCP) as deputy chief minister.
“Don’t you know? This happened five years ago. Everybody knows where the meeting took place… Everyone was there. Let me tell you again. Amit Shah was there, Gautam Adani was there, Praful Patel was there, Devendra Fadnavis was there, Ajit Pawar was there, Pawar Saheb was there,” said Ajit Pawar in an interview given to news website The News Minute. He said that as a party worker he followed only what the leader (Sharad Pawar) said.
Ajit’s rebellion lasted just 80 hours as Sharad Pawar decided to not support him following which a majority of the MLAs who had gone with the junior Pawar returned to the original party. A few days later, the undivided NCP and the Shiv Sena along with the Congress formed the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in Maharashtra.
Asked why his uncle Sharad Pawar did not crossover, Ajit said, “Sharad Pawar is the kind of person whose mind can never be predicted. Not a single person in the world can predict. Not even our aunty and neither Supriya (his daughter).”
When asked, Supriya Sule of the NCP-SP, led by the senior Pawar, said she had no knowledge of any such meeting. “Let me be very clear that I have absolutely no knowledge of any such meeting of the attendees which he has mentioned in the interview,” she said.
Rajya Sabha MP and Shiv Sena (UBT) spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi, however, took to ‘X’ and posted, “As per an interview given to a digital platform by a senior minister in the cabinet, Gautam Adani has sat through in meetings to decide how to get BJP to power in Maharashtra by trying to fix unlikely alliances. It raises some serious questions: Is he a BJP authorised negotiator? Has he been given the responsibility to fix alliances? Why is a businessman so keenly and closely working to bring BJP to power at any cost in Maharashtra?”
When contacted, a Congress spokesperson said that the party has no comments to offer on the matter.
While a spokesperson for the Adani Group also declined comment, a BJP source said that even though Ajit Pawar said that it took place five years ago, the meeting he mentioned actually happened in 2017.
