Friday, Apr 19, 2024 | Last Update : 11:04 AM IST
I don’t wrestle with kids, Sharad Pawar tells CM
The NCP chief was speaking at an election rally at Ambejogai in Beed district.
Mumbai: Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar on Friday ridiculed chief minister Devendra Fadnavis calling him a kid. Responding to Mr Fadnavis’s jibe that ‘there is no wrestler to fight with’ in the Maharashtra Assembly polls, Mr Pawar said that he did not wrestle with kids.
The NCP chief was speaking at an election rally at Ambejogai in Beed district. To this, Mr Fadnavis said that BJP leaders did not make gestures like Natrang (a 2010 Marathi film based on a stage actor playing effeminate roles).
The CM says that their wrestler is in the poll battle but there is no wrestler from the Opposition in sight, the NCP chief said. “There is this organisation called the Maharashtra State Wrestling Association, and its president’s name is Sharad Pawar,” he said.
“I stand behind all the wrestlers, and he (Mr Fadnavis) is telling us about wrestlers. We don’t fight with kids. If there was no contest, why are Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath holding rallies in the state,” the NCP patriarch questioned.
He himself wasn’t contesting but leaders of the ruling BJP-Shiv Sena could not make a single speech without mentioning his name, Mr Pawar said.
The NCP chief also hit out at Mr Shah for repeatedly questioning what Mr Pawar had done for Maharashtra, and listed his decisions such as giving 50 per cent reservation to women in local governing bodies and renaming Marathwada university after Dr B.R. Ambedkar.
The only answer that the BJP had for every issue, including unemployment and the agrarian crisis, was the abrogation of Article 370, Mr Pawar said. The NCP was not opposed to the scrapping of the provisions of the article which gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir, but the people's concerns needed to be addressed, he said.
Mr Pawar also reiterated the charge that “not an inch of work” had been carried out towards the construction of the Shivaji Maharaj memorial off the Mumbai coast. Similarly, no headway had been made on the Dr Ambedkar memorial in Dadar, central Mumbai, he said.
