After a day full of deja vu moments in Maharashtra politics with Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar's revolt posing a conundrum - which is the 'real' NCP? - the party's working president Praful Patel said, "We are one party and Sharad Pawar is our leader".
Praful Patel was among the NCP leaders who went with Ajit Pawar when he led a vertical split in his party to become the deputy chief minister. His sudden switch translated into surprising scenes at the Maharashtra Raj Bhavan where he, along with eight others, took oath to join the Eknath Shinde government. Mr Patel was present at the Raj Bhavan during Mr Pawar's shock move.
"Nobody has defected or broken away from the party. Sometimes there are differences within the party and it gets resolved. You wait for some more days and you'll see what I mean," Mr Patel told NDTV in a statement which raised more questions than answers.
The NCP leaders who took oath today are Chhagan Bhujbal, Dilip Walse Patil, Hasan Mushrif, Dhananjay Munde, Aditi Tatkare, Dharmarao Atram, Anil Patil and Sanjay Bansode.
After the oath ceremony, the new deputy Chief Minister insisted that he has the support of the "entire NCP", only to be rebuffed by his uncle Sharad Pawar soon after. "Sharad Pawar" was the 83-year-old's reply when he was asked by journalists who would now be the face of the party.
Praful Patel also asserted that the decision was taken "after a wider consultation with party MLAs and leaders of the party".
Earlier in the day, Sharad Pawar said that he was not upset with anybody except Praful Patel and Sunil Tatkare for taking a "wrong path".
"I am not upset with anybody except Praful Patel and Tatkare. I had appointed them as general secretaries but they abandoned the guidelines of the party president and took the wrong path. They have no right to remain in that position," he said.
His party insists that the MLAs that Ajit Pawar claims are supporting him are actually still with Sharad Pawar.
Mr Patel, known to be a close aide of Sharad Pawar, was elevated to the post of NCP's working president along with Supriya Sule on the 24th Foundation Day of the party last month.
Mr Tatkare, whose daughter Aditi took oath as minister, was appointed as the national general secretary of NCP.
In a rerun of 2019, Ajit Pawar's stunning revolt has made him the second deputy of Eknath Shinde, who had also rebelled against the leader of undivided Shiv Sena and then Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. Senior BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis is the other deputy chief minister.
It is for the third time under four years that Ajit Pawar takes up the role of deputy chief minister under three chief ministers-- Devendra Fadnavis, Mr Thackeray and Mr Shinde.
In November 2019 after the Assembly polls and the split between the BJP and the undivided Shiv Sena, the government of Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar, who were sworn in at an early morning ceremony by Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari, lasted just 80 hours as the 63-year-old was unable to cause a split in NCP.
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