Pawar cancels north Maharashtra tour after Khadse quarantines himself

@the_news_21

Pune: Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar on Tuesday temporarily called off his scheduled two-day tour of north Maharashtra as former Maharashtra Minister Eknath Khadse who recently joined the NCP, went into quarantine after his daughter, Rohini, tested positive for Covid-19. 

This was to be Pawar’s first visit to the region after the erstwhile Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Eknath Khadse changed his political stripes and joined the NCP citing disenchantment with the saffron party. 

According to NCP sources, Pawar senior was due to visit Jalgaon, Dhule and Nandurbar districts on November 20 and 21 reportedly with the aim of strengthening his party in the northern part of the State in wake of Khadse’s defection. 

A probable meeting with Khadse in the latter’s stronghold in Muktainagar was on the cards as well, intended as a show of strength.  

The much-anticipated tour was considered to be of significant political importance, given that several of Khadse was working to get several of his supporters into the NCP fold.  

“As my Covid-19 test has returned positive, I have been admitted to a hospital as a precautionary measure. However, my health is perfectly fine,” Rohini Khadse had tweeted earlier. Both Khadse and her daughter have tested positive for the virus. 

Khadse was denied a ticket for contesting from Muktainagar – his bastion – for the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly polls. In order to assuage his hurt pride the BJP top brass had given a ticket to his daughter. 

However, after Rohini Khadse’s defeat in the same election, Khadse has been vocal about his disenchantment with his party. Since the conclusion of the Assembly polls, relations between top Maharashtra BJP leadership and its notable OBC leaders led by Khadse and former Ministers Pankaja Munde, Prakash Mehta and other leaders who were either denied a ticket or suffered upset defeats in the election.  

Khadse had been very upset with his nemesis, former Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and the BJP’s leader in the State, for the latter’s ‘authoritarian style’ of running the party and eliminating his potential ‘rivals’ in a Machiavellian fashion.   

He had blamed Fadnavis for engineering his daughter’s defeat and denying him a ticket, remarking that there had been a ‘conspiracy’ by certain leaders within the State BJP unit aimed at finishing off his political career. 

Meanwhile, another senior BJP leader and former union minister Jaysingrao Gaikwad Patil after being reportedly side-lined by the State BJP brass despite having served at both the Centre and the State governments. 

Gaikwad, who wields influence in the Marathwada region, sent his resignation letter to the Maharashtra BJP president Chandrakant Patil in the morning.  In his letter, he said he was resigning from the Maharashtra BJP unit as well as from the primary membership of the party.