Sharad Pawar's dig at Modi: 'Wherever he did his rally, we won. It's my duty to thank him'

Nationalist Congress Party-SP (NCP-SP) leader Sharad Pawar has thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) performed poorly in the Lok Sabha elections in the state.

“We thank the prime minister,” said Pawar in a press conference of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), the coalition of his NCP-SP, Shiv Sena (UBT), and Congress. Together with the Ajit Pawar’s NCP faction and Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena faction, the BJP’s Mahayuti bloc won 17 seats.

Of the 48 seats in Maharashtra, the BJP won only nine whereas the MVA coalition won 30 seats. Following the drubbing in the polls, BJP leader and Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had offered his resignation but the BJP’s central leadership had asked him to continue.

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Taking a direct dig at Modi, Pawar said, “Wherever the Prime Minister’s roadshow and rally took place, we won. That is why I consider it my duty to thank the prime minister.”

In the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP failed to get a majority and was reduced to 240 seats. With the support from partners in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), mainly the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Janata Dal-United (JD-U), Modi returned to power for the third consecutive term by forming an NDA government. The NDA’s tally was 292 — well above the majority-mark of 272.

Speaking at the same press conference, Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan and Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray expressed confidence of repeating the results in state assembly elections slated to be held later this year.

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“We all have come together to save democracy. I hope that the way people voted for us in the Lok Sabha elections, we will get the same love in the assembly elections and now there will be a change of power in Maharashtra,” said Chavan.

In the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections, factionalism had risen in both the Shiv Sena and NCP. Ajit Pawar, the nephew of party patriarch Sharad Pawar, broke ranks with his uncle and joined the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance with a bunch of MLAs. This led to the split of the party into two factions. He became a deputy CM in the Eknath Shinde-led government. Previously in 2022, Shinde had similarly rebelled against the then-CM Uddhav Thackeray and created a split in the Shiv Sena. He joined ranks with the BJP along with the majority of the party’s MLAs and formed government in the state after toppling Thackeray’s government.

Following the 2019 assembly elections, Thackeray had formed the coalition government of MVA with undivided Shiv Sena and NCP along with Congress.