Congress 'durbaris' prevented Sharad Pawar from becoming Prime Minister: Praful Patel

Patel also pointed out that when Pawar was the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, he was humiliated and sidelined by the coterie.

The Congress coterie prevented India’s "most experienced and able" politician Sharad Pawar from becoming the Prime Minister and Congress President as he was repeatedly "sidelined and humiliated", said NCP Working President Praful Patel.

“The (Congress) coterie…the Congress ‘durbaris’ repeatedly did this,” Patel said.

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Patel’s statement came in the presence of 82-year-old Pawar, the NCP President, his nephew Ajit Pawar, who is Maharashtra’s Leader of Opposition, and daughter Supriya Sule, the Baramati MP, who is also the party’s Working President - at the silver jubilee celebrations of the party.

The NCP was founded on June 10, 1999, after Pawar along with P A Sangma and Tariq Anwar raised the issue of the foreign origin of Sonia Gandhi - leading to their expulsion.

Addressing the gathering, Patel, who is a former Civil Aviation Minister, said that he would like to go back in time and speak something from what others have spoken.

It may be mentioned, on December 12, 2020, the day Pawar turned 80, Patel had penned a note on this issue in the form of an advertorial that appeared in different newspapers in English, Hindi, Marathi, and Gujarati.

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Patel, a confidante of Pawar, during his first address as Working President, referred to two chains of events of 1991 and 1996 when his mentor missed the opportunity to get into the top jobs.

Referring to the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the 1991 polls, he said: "There was an opinion by many in the party that the Prime Ministerial candidate should be a young, dynamic person like Pawar who also had a good grip of the administration. However, the coterie of the Congress decided to appoint P V Narasimha Rao as the Prime Minister."

On the 1996 episode, he said, “There was an opinion that Pawar saheb should be the President of the Congress, the coterie was at it again. They prevented him from becoming the Congress President. Narsimha Rao proposed the name of Sitaram Kesri to take over.”

Patel also said that when Pawar was the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, he was "humiliated and sidelined" by the coterie.