Pune: Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar on Friday continued with his tirade against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah antecedents in his election rallies across Maharashtra. The NCP chief remarked that Shah spoke less about vital issues facing the state in his speeches and seemed more concerned about making personal attacks on him.
Addressing election rallies in Shirur and Daund in Pune district, the NCP president without naming Shah sarcastically remarked that these days as the election temperature rising, a certain gentleman from Gujarat who has served jail terms in the past, is touring the state. He added that even though he (Pawar) was not contesting in this election, his (Pawar) name is perpetually on his (Shah’s) lips.
Pawar criticized Shah for irrelevantly harping on the Modi governments move to abrogate Article 370 ahead of the Maharashtra polls as the BJP had nothing else on their agenda. Shah, in his speeches, repeatedly demands that he (Pawar) give an explanation on why he did not support the BJP government’s withdrawal of Article 370. He added that Shah in his speeches is silent on pressing issues like rising farmer suicides, declining growth rate, the economic slowdown and soaring unemployment talks about how Kashmir is peaceful now and urging people to go and do farming in Kashmir.
The NCP chief refuted the claims of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis that the BJP government had put Maharashtra once again on the country’s industrial map. Pawar stated that the economic slowdown has destroyed livelihoods of youths in Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial area. Holding the BJP government responsible for the economic slowdown, he said that the BJP leaders lack the capability to check this slowdown and neither do they have any grasp of it.
In response, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis during his campaign rallies in Ahmednagar district targeted Pawar and the sugar lobby of the NCP-Congress leaders. Fadnavis remarked that nobody has a monopoly over sugar factories anymore. He further said that the livelihoods of the sugarcane farmers have sustained and that the sugar factories in the state are alive today only because of the bailout package of Rs. 8000 crore by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
