New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Sharat Pawar and have lunch at his residence in Baramati today. As expected, the ties between BJP and Shiv Sena are going to hit a new low post this meeting.
Just a day before Minister of State (MoS) Sanjay Rathod, who is from the Sena, termed the power-sharing deal in Maharashtra a farce and cast aspersions on Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and senior BJP minister Eknath Khadse.
However, an exercise in damage control was initiated with both parties agreeing to form a coordination panel that is scheduled to meet for the first time on seething at allegedly being sidelined in the government, Rathod opted to make public a five-page letter he had sent in this regard to Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray.
Alleging that Sena ministers in the state government were being accorded a “step motherly treatment” and were “not being taken into confidence on crucial government matters, including appointments and transfers”, Rathod's letter claims this was being done deliberately to malign the Sena's image among the masses.
The Sena has five Cabinet ministers and five ministers of state in the Maharashtra government. Rathod's letter to Thackeray alleges that powers of portfolios held by the party ministers have been diluted.
The letter also alleges a deliberate move to keep Shiv Sena ministers away from platforms that gained publicity for government decisions.
Reacting angrily to Khadse's charge that the Shiv Sena MoS was keen to handle files on matters under the Anti-Corruption Bureau lens, Rathod questioned Khadse's own interest in these files, while denying that he had ever sought these files.
The Prime Minister will be in Maharashtra to attend the function at Krishi Vigyan Kendra in Baramati today, which was fixed long time ago. But despite cautions of NCP leaders that it has no significance, the Modi-Pawar meeting has created a buzz in the state's political circles.
