Aurangabad: NCP supremo Sharad Pawar revived his contacts in the BJP after realising that the Congress’ real objective is to check his party in Maharashtra than to defeat in the Shiv Sena-BJP combine.
Mr Pawar had been watching the Congress’ moves closely ever since it sent Prithviraj Chavan in Maharashtra as the CM about four years ago and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi gave him full support.
The Congress and the NCP had defeated the Shiv Sena-BJP combine since 1999 because the state leaders in the two parties had worked together several years in the Cabinet of Mr Pawar, the late Vasantdada Patil and Sudhakarrao Naik.
Mr Pawar had been working on other options for the last two to three years knowing well Mr Prithviraj Chavan had been acting as per the script. He had good equations with Narendra Modi when the latter was Gujarat CM and today, the top BJP leaders in Maharashtra are not bitter towards him.
