"State Of Instability": Congress Stirs Pot After Sharad Pawar-E Shinde Meet

Amid the rumblings in the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi over Sharad Pawar's meeting with Eknath Shinde, the Congress spoke up today, drawing a barb from the Nationalist Congress Party immediately.

"Five or six MPs from Sharad Pawar's NCP are restless. It is unclear what they will do, but they are currently in a state of instability," senior Congress leader and former Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah are "relentlessly pursuing them," Chavan alleged. "They have no desire for the Opposition to exist. What happened to Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena could well happen to Pawar Saheb's NCP," he added.

The defection of six MPs from Team Uddhav last month has had the Opposition camp boiling.

The MPs had defected to the Eknath Shinde camp, alleging that Uddhav Thackeray was planning to merge his faction of the Shiv Sena with the Congress -- a situation they claimed was unacceptable.
While the MPs had ensured that they had the numbers to elude the anti-defection law, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla is yet to take a call on their move.

Coming on the heels of this, Sharad Pawar's meeting with Eknath Shinde -- the man responsible for splitting the united Shiv Sena and bringing down the Uddhav Thackeray government four years ago -- has touched a raw nerve in the Opposition camp.

Without being as graphic as Chavan, Sena UBT's Sanjay Raut has made his meaning clear.

"Why did Pawar Saheb choose Shinde's chamber for a meeting? Was the entire Vidhan Bhavan deserted?" Raut had said.

Holding a party meeting under the roof of a traitor who "brought down our government erodes and dilutes his (Sharad Pawar's) stature," he added.

Sharad Pawar, 82, had visited the Maharashtra Assembly on Wednesday to attend a crucial meeting on the Maharashtra-Karnataka border dispute chaired by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

After the meeting, he had gone to meet Shinde at his office at the assembly premises. He even took a meeting of his party's legislators there, sparking intense speculation.

The NCP's Jayant Patil issued a scathing reply. "No one is going anywhere! Our 8 MPs and 10 MLAs are united," Patil said. "It is not right to keep making such predictions about another party. How would it be if I were to start making similar predictions about Congress MLAs tomorrow? It is not appropriate to speak about such matters until something actually happens," the MLA said.