BJP’s political might shrinking in many parts of country: Pawar

Mumbai: NCP chief Sharad Pawar on Sunday said the BJP’s political might is shrinking in many parts of the country and it relies on the formula of complete “misuse” of power.

Addressing a meeting of Nationalist Congress Party’s office-bearers here, he also said that people are not supporting those (parties and leaders) who wish to form an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is a pan-India picture.

“The people of this country are not with those who wish to ally with the BJP. This is the picture at the pan-India level. You just take out a map of the country and you will see that BJP is not in power in even a single state from south India,” he said.

Notably, Pawar’s nephew and senior NCP leader Ajit Pawar joined the Shiv Sena-BJP government in July this year along with eight MLAs. Ajit claims he has the support of a majority of MLAs of NCP and has staked the claim to the party’s name and poll symbol.

The senior Pawar, instrumental in forming the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) under Uddhav Thackeray post the 2019 Maharashtra assembly polls, said the BJP came to power in the state by splitting Shiv Sena.

He claimed a similar formula was applied in Goa as well as in Madhya Pradesh, where Congress was in power till March 2020 when the party-led government collapsed.

Pawar said the BJP was in power only in Gujarat which it managed to retain (in the 2022 polls).

“The BJP is not the ruling party in Rajasthan, Punjab, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh and West Bengal. Except for Uttar Pradesh and a couple of other states, the BJP’s political power is shrinking in all other parts of the country,” he said.

Pawar also said the political picture will become clear after the elections.

“The reason behind the BJP losing power is the misuse of power. The decisions taken by that party are not empowering the common man,” he added.

He said they have decided to oppose a party that is “grossly misusing power for its own benefit”. “We and other like-minded parties have formed an alliance called INDIA,” Pawar said, referring to the bloc of Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, which has more than two dozen opposition parties.

“In Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal’s party (AAP) won three times. Now Kejriwal is being harassed. His home was inspected three times. Complete misuse of power is the formula of the BJP,” he said.

If a party is working with such a formula, it has to be jointly opposed, he said. “Our party and other similar-minded outfits came together and decided to pose a major challenge to the BJP,” he said.

The NCP founder also slammed the state home department’s move to hire 3,000 security personnel on contract for the Mumbai police.

“I have worked as the home minister and chief minister of the state but I have never heard of such contractual hiring for the home department. Nobody in the country has ever tried to hire people for the home department on a contractual basis. But now the BJP government in Maharashtra is trying to do it,” he said.

Pawar also expressed his displeasure at the government’s plans to merge schools having fewer than 20 students with schools having more children in the vicinity and give some state-run schools to private companies for adoption.

He said, “An alcohol manufacturer has adopted a school in Nashik district. It organised an event in the school where dancer Gautami Patil was invited to perform. If such a performance is shown to the students of the school, what kind of message will it send out,” he asked.