Set aside differences, unite against BJP: Sharad Pawar
NCP chief Sharad Pawar on Tuesday returned to the centre of Opposition unity debate urging parties to set aside differences to take on the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections while picking Congress up for a rebuke for standing by the AAP facing trouble with central agencies.
Pawar used a meeting of his party's minority wing to delve on the unity theme, with the NCP patriarch pointing out that the BJP is not popular as projected as it has managed to win states mainly through defections and not through direct elections.
Addressing his party workers, he said his efforts will be to stitch a combination against the BJP and all will have to bury their hatchet for the larger common good. "One should not take action that will benefit communal forces," he said.
Disapproving of Congress' attack on AAP after the CBI registered a case against Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, Pawar said, "It was the duty of the Congress. AAP is at the receiving end. You may have differences with Arvind Kejriwal. But our real fight is with the BJP. Our fight is against the communal forces."
Insisting that no party should take any step that would benefit the communal forces, he said, there was a feeling of hopelessness that nothing will change in the next 25 years when Emergency was imposed but within two years in 1977, people ushered in change in the elections.
"We political leaders may not be that intelligent. But the common man is intelligent. The common man will teach the BJP a lesson in 2024," he said.
Pawar said that the BJP is not in power in large parts of the country and it managed to form governments in several places as it managed defections. He said the BJP had not won Karnataka, Maharashtra or Madhya Pradesh but formed governments only due to defections.
"Such actions do not have public sanction," he said, while reminding that the BJP is not in power in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Delhi, Rajasthan, Punjab, and Chhattisgarh.