Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar on Tuesday said that his decision to join the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance was not a compulsion or a compromise, adding that his idea of development aligns with the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In a candid conversation with ANI during which he shared his thoughts in the lead-up to his floating a rival NCP alliance with his loyalists and eventually joining the ruling NDA in the State as the Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Ajit Pawar said, “There was no compulsion and neither was it compromise. I always think about development. Who is driving the country’s development today? It is PM Modi. I worked against him in 2014 and 2019 (Lok Sabha elections), but if you see today, and as Prime Minister Modi, himself said yesterday (on the campaign trail in Maharashtra), we accomplished the same amount of work in one year as was done in the 10 years under (former PM) Manmohan Singh.

 

He has also been working for the upliftment and well-being of the poor and backward sections. In the last 10 years, not one allegation has been levelled against PM Modi.” Triggering another seismic event in the landscape of Maharashtra politics on July 2, last year, the nephew of NCP patriarch Sharad Pawar floated a rival faction, which joined the BJP-led NDA. Ajit Pawar took oath as the Deputy Chief Minister for the fifth time. Claiming that the Opposition bloc--I.N.D.I.A.--had no prime ministerial face, he said there was no one who could rival PM Modi on the yardsticks of leadership and popularity. “More than 65 per cent of people are saying that they want PM Modi to return for a third term. There was a lot of talk around Nitish Kumar (rivalling PM Modi for the country’s most powerful post) in 2019 but he is with the NDA now,” he said.