No confusion within MVA, will ensure successful I.N.D.I.A meeting in Mumbai, says Sharad Pawar

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar on Monday said there is no confusion within the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance over his meeting with nephew and Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar in Pune. The MVA is united and we will successfully organise the next meeting of opposition bloc I.N.D.I.A in Mumbai on 31 August and 1 September, Pawar told reporters in Baramati. This was the 82-year-old veteran politician’s maiden visit to his home turf after Ajit Pawar joined the Eknath Shinde-led government on 2 July. MVA constituents Congress and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) had asked the NCP chief to clear the confusion such meetings between the uncle and nephew create in political circles. There is no confusion among MVA partners. We are all together and will ensure the INDIA meeting in Mumbai on 31 August and 1 September is organised successfully, Pawar said. Pawar asked media not to create more confusion by asking the same question. Myself, Uddhav Thackeray and state Congress president Nana Patole have taken the responsibility of organising the INDIA meeting in Mumbai, Pawar said. The meeting will be held at a luxury hotel. The NCP has no association with “factions from MVA” which align with the BJP at the state and national and level, Pawar said, alluding to the move by his nephew. Pawar said he is expecting to speak to NCP leader Nawab Malik, who was on Friday granted two months’ interim bail by the Supreme Court in a money laundering case. The Enforcement Directorate arrested the former minister on 23 February last year in a case registered over the Goawala compound property in Kurla, allegedly linked to gangster Dawood Ibrahim. Malik is in judicial custody since March 2022 and was admitted at a private hospital in Kurla in May last year. He is still at the hospital. Pawar sidestepped a question on an editorial in Monday’s issue of Sena (UBT) mouthpiece Saamana expressing displeasure over the frequent meetings between him and Ajit Pawar.