Sharad Pawar, the head of the nationalist Congress party, offered an apology on Saturday to the residents of Yeola, the district of expelled rebel leader Chhagan Bhujbal.
Ajit Pawar, the nephew of Sharad Pawar and a former deputy chief minister, and Bhujbal, a former senior advisor to the NCP patriarch, were two of the eight NCP rebels that joined the NDA administration of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.
On Saturday, Pawar senior addressed a crowd in Yeola and said, “This rally is not about bringing any accusations against anybody. I’m here to express my regret to everyone.
“I am sorry that I chose incorrectly (to field Bhujbal from this constituency). You put your faith in me and supported my party, but my judgement was flawed. I must thus apologise to you. I swear I won’t make the same error again the next time I come here,” the NCP chairman declared during the event.
“A few days ago, during a rally, PM Modi blamed the NCP and the Congress. I want to tell him to punish us if we do something wrong. We are willing to take the consequences if we break the law. But we, the Opposition, are prepared for it since this is a struggle for the Lok Sabha, the NCP leader remarked.
The NCP leader responded to Ajit Pawar’s comments about his age and advice to leave politics by saying that although he was against making personal remarks about anybody, the other members of his party wouldn’t like it if he or other leaders in his faction made similar statements.
Ajit Pawar broke the NCP down the middle and joined the NDA administration in the state alongside 8 other MLAs and key leaders, including Bhujbal, Praful Patel, and Hasan Mushrif, causing a new political earthquake to shake Maharashtra.
His fellow dissidents were also sworn in as ministers at the same time that Ajit Pawar took the oath of office as the Shinde government’s deputy chief minister.
