Not given clean chit to anyone: NCP chief Sharad Pawar

Faced with an open revolt from within his party for supporting Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the Rafale deal, Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar on Friday insisted he was being quoted out of context. Tariq Anwar, co-founder of NCP and Member of Parliament from Katihar constituency in Bihar resigned from the NCP and Lok Sabha seat citing differences over Pawar’s support of PM Modi. 

“At the outset, let me say this – I did not give anyone any clean chit. Who am I to do so? In the same interview I had also insisted on a joint parliamentary committee for Rafale deal. I had voiced the need to make public the purchase price of jets,” Pawar told DNA over phone. 

Pawar said that the Communist Party of India leader Sitaram Yechury had called him to say he had read the interview and there was nothing wrong in what he had said. 

When asked if his statement will have any repercussions on the Opposition unity, Pawar said, “The question simply did not arise because I had never made any such statements.”

This explanation, however, did not sit well with Anwar, who had been suspended from the Congress along with Pawar and P A Sangma in 1999 for raising the then Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s Italian origins in a party meeting. The trio later went on to start the NCP. After Anwar resigned, former Maharashtra Minority Commission’s chairman Munaf Hakim also resigned. Party’s efforts to placate both Anwar and Hakim failed as they refused to budge and did not entertain any calls from Pawar’s political emissary Praful Patel.

“It is a sad day for us as our senior colleague has left us. It’s very surprising because he has based his resignation based on a news channel interview where facts are very clear on Rafale deal. Before taking such a drastic step, he should have spoken to Pawar,” Patel said.

Pawar’s daughter and Baramati MP Supriya Sule, too, jumped into the controversy and tweeted saying Pawar was being misquoted. “He raised three questions: 1) What is the justification for a 300 per cent price increase from Rs 526 crore to Rs 1670 crore which potentially could be a significant loss to the exchequer? 2) When BJP raised both price and specification issues during Bofors allegations, then why are they hiding behind artificial justification of secrecy of agreements vis-à-vis both commercial price and offset agreements? 3) If such doubts have been raised and the government is so confident, then why are they shying from setting up a JPC?” Sule said on Twitter.