Senior Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) leaders Jitendra Awhad and Jayant Patil on Thursday met Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde amid buzz over a party's switch to the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), said sources. The meeting, which lasted for nearly an hour, was held at Shinde's Nandanvan Bungalow residence in Mumbai.
According to sources, the three leaders held discussions over power sharing arrangements if the NCP(SP) were to join the NDA, which consists the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Shiv Sena and Sunetra Pawar's NCP. Discussions were also held over portfolio allocation.
However, both Patil and Awhad dismissed speculations of NCP(SP)'s merger with the NCP and joining the NDA, and said they only held discussions with Shinde over issues concerning their respective assembly constituencies. They also sought the disqualification of a municipal council president, saying they had met Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis earlier over the issue.
"Regarding the matter of the councillor who won by 7,200 votes—someone filed a petition, and the Sangli Collector disqualified him; he has now filed an appeal. We do not feel the action taken against him was handled correctly, so it was necessary to bring this to their attention," Patil told reporters.
There has been a buzz in a section of media that the NCP(SP) might merge with the NCP and join the NDA. Speculations are also being made that the NCP(SP) might support the delimitation bill in the upcoming monsoon session of the Parliament if the government decides to table it.
Several of its leaders had also met Fadnavis, which only fueled the speculations. However, party's working president Supriya Sule dismissed all the speculations and said if the proposed legislation were based on a uniform 50 per cent increase in seats across all states, there would be little reason to oppose it.
"The media reports suggesting that NCP (SP) would support the legislation were based on unnamed sources and had led to confusion," Sule, who is a Lok Sabha member from Baramati constituency, said on earlier this week. "I am clarifying the matter after consulting NCP (SP) top leadership, including party president Sharad Pawar and senior leader Jayant Patil, to avoid any misunderstanding among workers of the party and the MVA."
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