Don't know if Shiv Sena wanted to ditch BJP, ally with Congress in 2017: Pawar

Pune, Oct 3 (IANS) Throwing cold water on Congress leader Ashok Chavan's recent claims, Nationalist Congress Party President Sharad Pawar said he was not aware whether the Shiv Sena wanted to dump the Bharatiya Janata Party and ally with the Congress-NCP to form a government in 2017.

While interacting with mediapersons here, Pawar was queried on Chavan's claim last week that a Shiv Sena delegation comprising Eknath Shinde - presently the Chief Minister - had met him in his office with such a proposal to snap ties with BJP and join hands for a Sena-Congress-NCP government then.

Chavan had even said that he had informed the delegation that he would first put it up before the NCP and then after its approval take it to the Congress high command, though nothing moved later.

"I don't know... Nobody even made such a proposal to the NCP. If it was so, I would have known something about it," Pawar said almost dismissively.

He said though the NCP leaders have the right to make decisions, they keep him posted of such developments, and whatever Chavan had said, he had never heard of it before.

Almost simultaneously, even senior Shiv Sena leader Chandrakant Khaire had made a similar claim that in 2014, a group of 15 MLAs including Shinde had met Congress leaders with a proposal to work out a Sena-Congress-NCP alliance government. (IANS report - September 29).

Khaire, who was backed by senior Sena leaders like Vinayak Raut and others, said that there was no further development in the matter, though the BJP leaders attempted to turn the tables on the Sena over the issue.

The claims by Congress-Sena leaders last week had embarrassed the Shinde Group which has been claiming that they had rebelled against Shiv Sena President and ex-CM Uddhav Thackeray as he allied with the Congress-NCP after the 2019 elections and had jettisoned the Hindutva agenda of the late Balasaheb Thackeray.