Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar.
Credit: PTI Photo
Mumbai: Maharashtra deputy CM Ajit Pawar on Monday said he is not bothered about his criticism by others and is only concerned about what key leaders of the ruling Mahayuti alliance say.
Pawar’s remarks came a day after a group of BJP workers led by the party’s Junnar chief Asha Buchake waved black flags at his convoy.
“I don’t have anything to do with what other people say. I pay attention to the key people, CM Eknath Shinde of Shiv Sena and Chandrashekhar Bawankule and Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP,” Pawar told reporters during his Jan Sanman Yatra in Mumbai.
The Nationalist Congress Party, led by Pawar, had demanded that Fadnavis, who also hold the Home portfolio, to clarify as to whether he approved of the behaviour of his BJP workers.
Buchake had claimed that the NCP is trying to promote its candidate in the Junnar seat for the upcoming assembly polls.
“They are trying to strangle us… Therefore we have adopted an aggressive stand,” she told reporters after the protesters raised slogans against Ajit Pawar.
An official meeting was organised on tourism development in Junnar on Sunday but the BJP was not invited for the meeting, she said.
“If we are part of Mahayuti, then why were pictures of CM Shinde and deputy CM Fadnavis not put up in the meeting hall,” she added.
Asked if he will get a ‘rakhi’ tied on his wrist from estranged cousin Supriya Sule on Raksha Bandhan, Ajit Pawar said, “I will do it if she is in Mumbai today”.
Raksha Bandhan festival, which falls on the last day of the holy Hindu month of Sawan, is marked by the practice of sisters tying a ‘rakhi’ on the wrist of their brothers.
Pawar last week expressed his regret for making his wife Sunetra Pawar contest against his cousin Supriya Sule in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Sule won the election.
Pawar had accepted that he made a mistake and said, “I love all my sisters. No one should allow politics to enter homes. I made a mistake in fielding Sunetra against my sister. This should not have happened. But the parliamentary board of NCP took the decision which I followed. Now I feel it was wrong”.