Sharad Pawar, Shiv Sena lambast Raj Thackeray, call him BJP’s ‘dummy’

NCP leader says MNS chief lacks political consistency

A day after Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray’s vitriolic assault on the ruling Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), NCP chief Sharad Pawar took jibes at Mr. Thackeray, remarking there was no consistency in his political disposition while slamming the MNS leader’s allegations of the NCP being a “casteist party”.

Speaking in Kolhapur, Mr. Pawar said that the NCP was one of the few political parties in the country with a vision to give opportunities to people of all castes, communities and tribes.

In his speech on the occasion of Gudi Padwa on Saturday, the MNS chief had sharply rebuked the NCP before a jam-packed audience at Mumbai’s Shivaji Park for allegedly sowing the seeds of caste politics in Maharashtra while accusing Mr. Pawar’s party of “running rings around” the two leading parties in the State, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena, led by his [Mr. Raj Thackeray’s] estranged cousin, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray.

The NCP shares power with the Shiv Sena and the Congress in the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition in Maharashtra, which was formed after the October 2019 Maharashtra Assembly election with the objective of keeping the BJP out of power.

Mocking Mr. Raj Thackeray, Mr. Pawar said: “He goes underground for three-four months, then resurfaces to give a speech and then disappears again. He lacks any political consistency. His party numbers can be counted on the fingers of a hand.”

Remarking that he failed to understand what the MNS chief had seen worth praising in the Uttar Pradesh Government (led by BJP CM Yogi Adityanath), Mr. Pawar said that it had escaped Mr. Thackeray’s notice that farmers had been killed in U.P. and there were mass farmer protests against the Centre there.

“The reason why the election results turned out different [referring to the BJP’s emphatic win] is another matter…but farmers died in Lakhimpur Kheri, there were protests on the border all year round. Uddhav Thackeray’s government in Maharashtra would never have allowed this to happen. Yet, if Raj Thackeray says the U.P. government is good, then I don’t want to comment on him,” said the NCP chief, tartly remarking there were “no limits” to what Raj Thackeray could say.