Mumbai: Veteran Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Eknath Khadse vented his ire indirectly lashing out at former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis for hobnobbing with Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar for support in government formation in an apparent reference to the Fadnavis governments alleged clean chit to the NCP leader in the multi-crore Irrigation scam.
Speaking on the sidelines of the special session convened to enable newly elected 288 MLAs of the 14th legislative assembly to take their oath of membership, he remarked “we had given bullock cart loads of proofs against Ajit Pawar. All those proofs have already been sold at old paper mart. Then the old papers fetched good price”
Further lashing out at Fadnavis, the senior former BJP member argued that the party never goes wrong, but when some leaders in the party entrusted with decision making powers take wrong decisions the party has to face its damages.
Commenting further, the former minister stated that during the assembly polls the party should have taken him, Vinod Tawde, Prakash Mehta and Chandrashekhar Bawankule into confidence when they were denied party tickets.
“Had we been taken into confidence the party would have been able to add 20 to 25 seats more to its kitty. In 2014 the BJP took the decision to snap its alliance with the Shiv Sena, it was the party decision. But, I was entrusted the responsibility of announcing it. The BJP and Shiv Sena contested the elections separately, but later on came together. For five years the government functioned well”, he remarked further.
He further argued that again in 2019 the two parties contested the elections as an alliance. Khadse contended that the people gave the majority mandate to both the parties, but only on the issue of who should have been the Chief Minister, the two parties parted ways. He further added that for the last one month what is going on in Maharashtra politics he (Khadse) is watching quietly from the sidelines.
Khadse remarked “at a time when the BJP did not have the forceful presence in the country, people threw stones at us. In those difficult days we strived hard to make the party grow. We did penance for it in the last 35 to 40 years. But, people like us were sidelined”.
