New Delhi: A day after Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar landed into a controversy for his statement on the Rafale deal, one of the founder members of party, Tariq Anwar, resigned in protest.
While Pawar, in an interview to a Marathi television channel, supported the opposition demand that the price of the Rafale aircraft be revealed by the Union government, he also said that the Congress and other opposition parties were wrong to demand that the technical details of the deal should be disclosed too. He also added that “people still don’t have a doubt on Modi’s intentions’, a statement that ruffled many feathers in the opposition ranks.
Although party spokesperson Nawab Malik was quick to clarify that Pawar had not given any “clean chit” to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and that the party still wants the Union government to disclose the price of the aircraft and constitute a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) to probe the questions around the deal, the BJP lapped up the opportunity to launch an attack on the Congress.
Protesting the statement, Anwar, who was the national secretary of the NCP until now and held Bihar’s Katihar Lok Sabha constituency, sent a shocker to his party by resigning from both the party and his MP seat.
Making the announcement in his Lok Sabha constituency, Anwar said told reporters he was “hurt” by Pawar’s interview to a Marathi news channel this week where he said Modi’s intentions on the Rafale fighter jet aircraft deal were not wrong.
“Our (NCP) national president Sharad Pawar indirectly gave a clean chit to PM, in a statement on Rafale deal. PM is completely involved in deal. Opposition is demanding constitution of JPC for probe in it. I am upset with his statement,” he is quoted as saying in the Financial Express.
Pawar’s statement directly contradicted Anwar’s position on Rafale. The Katihar MP has been seeking a white paper on the Rafale deal, which has been one of the opposition’s biggest attacks on the Modi government over the last few months.
Reacting to the development, Congress MLC in Bihar, Prem Chand Mishra described Anwar as a “fine leader” and said that he was “eagerly looking at his next political move”, leading to speculations that he may join the Congress.
However, when asked about this, Anwar said, “No decision has been taken so far about my future political move. I will be deciding that after consulting my supporters.”
Anwar, who is a prominent Muslim leader in Bihar, was a former president of Congress’s Bihar unit before he formed the NCP in the 1990s along with Pawar and the late P.A. Sangma to oppose Sonia Gandhi’s appointment as the AICC president. The trio were opposing Gandhi’s elevation on grounds of her foreign origins.
Anwar’s resignation will come as a jolt to the NCP ahead of the 2019 general elections as the party may now be seen as a divided house. The NCP and the Congress have traditionally allied for the assembly and parliamentary polls in Maharashtra. Many political observers feel that the Maratha and Dalit agitations that have swept the state over the last two years have boosted the alliance’s prospects against the BJP, whose ally the Shiv Sena has already declared its decision to fight the general polls alone.
Now, the NCP may have to explain its ambiguous stance on Rafale before it takes on the BJP.
(With PTI inputs)