The Maharashtra drama recently came to an end when Shiv Sena supremo Uddhav Thackeray was sworn in as the chief minister in alliance with Sharad Pawar led NCP and Sonia Gandhi led Congress. Before the drama ended, in the wee hours of the morning, Ajit Pawar was sworn in as the deputy CM and Devendra Fadnavis as the CM before the alliance falling apart in 3 days. At the time, Sharad Pawar had claimed that he had no knowledge of the alliance between Ajit Pawar and BJP led by Devendra Fadnavis in the state and had categorically distanced himself from the alliance.
However, in an interview to a TV channel, Devendra Fadnavis has now claimed that Ajit Pawar had told Fadnavis that Sharad Pawar knew of the alliance being entered into by Ajit Pawar. In fact, he has also claimed that most NCP MLAs knew about the alliance and Fadnavis himself had spoken to some of them.
Fadnavis said that Ajit Pawar had told him that he did not want to form a government with Congress and that a three-party alliance would be unstable for the state. He had then told Fadnavis that Sharad Pawar was aware of the plans. He also revealed that the alliance talks between Ajit Pawar and BJP were ‘on for a few days’ and that such alliance talks are not finalised in a few hours or 1-2 days.
Interestingly, hinting at much more, Fadnavis also said that the subject of the meeting between Sharad Pawar and Prime Minister Modi has not been revealed fully and there are many things that happened behind the scenes that will be revealed when the time is right.
In this interview, Devendra Fadnavis also lashed out at the Shiv Sena, Congress and NCP alliance for putting crucial development projects on hold. He said that projects can always be reviewed and there is nothing wrong with it, however, when the state government is creating an environment where big projects are scrapped, how are investors going to invest in the state.
He also said that at the request of Uddhav Thackeray, he had decided to give the new government a chance but he had his doubts about the alliance since the three parties were ideologically not aligned.
After the Maharashtra Assembly Elections, Shiv Sena had decided to break its alliance with BJP because Uddhav Thackeray wanted the Chief Minister post for either his son Aditya Thackeray or himself. BJP had flatly refused and said repeatedly that giving the CM position to Sena was not discussed when the alliance was formed. Shiv Sena, in its desperation for power, had then turned ‘secular’ and allied with Congress and NCP to become the CM of the state.
