Talks about a merger between the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) and the Congress are underway, Maharashtra Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar was quoted as saying by NDTV on Tuesday.
“Those who subscribe to the secular ideals of the Congress and Sharad Pawar are always welcome in our party,” the former leader of Opposition in the state told the channel.
The talks are in the final stages and progressing positively, NDTV quoted unidentified sources as saying.
Sharad Pawar founded the Nationalist Congress Party in 1999 after he broke away from the Congress over his objections to Sonia Gandhi leading the party. However, the NCP allied with the Congress to form the government in Maharashtra in October 1999.
The Congress and NCP remained in power in the state till 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena alliance won the Assembly election.
In 2023, the NCP split into two groups when Sharad Pawar’s nephew Ajit Pawar, along with several party MLAs, joined Maharashtra’s Mahayuti coalition government comprising the BJP and the Shiv Sena faction led by Eknath Shinde.
In February 2024, the Election Commission ruled that Ajit Pawar’s faction was the real NCP and allocated it the “clock” symbol.
Ajit Pawar died on January 28 when a small aircraft crashed near an airstrip in Baramati town while attempting to land.
The reported discussions about a merger between the Congress and the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) come against the backdrop of a spate of defections from the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and the Trinamool Congress to the fold of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.
Edited by Sneha.
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