Sharad Pawar has to take a call on joining NDA, says NCP’s Tatkare

Tatkare claimed that discussions had taken place in 1999 itself when Sharad Pawar was expelled from the Congress after he raised the issue of Sonia Gandhi’s foreign lineage. “In the 1999 Assembly elections, the Congress and NCP contested independently. No one had a full majority. The then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had called Sharad Pawar and proposed forming a government in the state with the NDA. However, I do not know why Sharad Pawar did not accept it, as I was a second-tier leader at that time. But it is my feeling that we should have joined the NDA back then,” he said.

Commenting on the bitterness between the ruling alliance ahead of the poll campaign, Tatkare said that the mutual attacks, the digging up of each other’s grievances, and the tension created within the Mahayuti on the occasion of the Municipal Corporation elections would be solved after polls. “Previously, during the campaign for the Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation election, Eknath Shinde had warned of resigning out of frustration. Later, everything became smooth. Even now, despite the allegations, everything will be settled, and after the results on January 16, we will sit together, share Tilgul, and sweeten our relations,” he said.

He said that the Mahayuti is not fighting together everywhere in the state, just as the Maha Vikas Aghadi is also fighting separately. “There isn’t much of a contest this time. The real contest is within the Mahayuti itself. The Mahayuti had won 80 percent of the seats in the Municipality-Nagar Panchayat elections, and that will be repeated in the Municipal Corporation elections.”