Raigad (Maharashtra) : Just a day after predicting snap mid-term assembly elections in Maharashtra, NCP president Sharad Pawar Wednesday said he had no plan to unseat the Devendra Fadnavis government in the state.
“The picture created after my statement yesterday (Tuesday) was exaggerated. We are not interested in toppling this government. We have been given the mandate to sit in the opposition,” Pawar told party leaders on the second and final day of the Nationalist Congress Party conclave at the picturesque beach resort of Alibaug.
He said his statements were not different from his earlier stance that the NCP would not destabilise the government.
“But, if Maharashtra’s interests are not protected, we will take a stand. This does not mean we want to bring down the government or create political instability in the state,” he said.
In this context, he questioned the ‘experts’ on television debates who comprised the same set of four-five faces speaking on every topic.
He also termed as ‘wrong’ the propaganda generated by the TV debates that the NCP wanted to topple the Maharashtra government.
On the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, Pawar said a query under Right to Information (RTI) has shown that 74 percent accounts under the scheme were with zero balance.
Taking a potshot at the style of functioning of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Pawar said: “We don’t know about the product, but the marketing is excellent. We must concede that none can defeat him when it comes to marketing even small things.”
The NCP chief said when Modi asked people in Baramati to throw out the Pawar family, the party’s victory margin rose to over 90,000 votes.
In Tasgaon (Sangli), where Modi addressed a rally, R.R. Patil’s victory margin shot up to 20,000 votes instead of the usual 3,000-4,000.
However, Pawar admitted that Modi and the BJP utilised the media effectively, especially the social media in the elections and urged the NCP to also exploit and make an impact through the social media.