Ajit Pawar says Gautam Adani was part of 2019 meeting following elections

New Delhi: Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar in an interview to Newslaundry's Srinivasan Jain said that industrialist Gautam Adani was present during discussions about a potential alliance between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the NCP following the 2019 assembly elections in Maharashtra.

However, social media handles linked to the Congress party wrongly peddled that the meeting was to break MVA and held Adani responsible for the fall of Uddhav Thackeray government.

It may be noted that MVA leader Sharad Pawar has publicly flaunted his relationship with Adani.

Sharad Pawar had also defended the businessman on several occasions and acknowledged his contributions to the infrastructure sector in India.

Ajit Pawar, who currently serves as the Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra, mentioned in the interview that a meeting took place where key figures from both the BJP and NCP, including Amit Shah, Devendra Fadnavis, and Sharad Pawar, deliberated on forming a government. Notably, Gautam Adani, the head of the Adani Group, was also part of these discussions.

The BJP and Adani Group have yet to respond to these claims.

When Uddhav Thackeray refused to support a BJP government after the elections, Devendra Fadnavis was sworn in for a second term as Maharashtra Chief Minister on November 24, 2019, with NCP leader Ajit Pawar as his deputy.

Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari administered the oath of office to the two leaders at Raj Bhawan in the early hours.

Back then, NCP chief Sharad Pawar said Ajit Pawar’s decision to join hands with Fadnavis was personal.

In the interview with Jain, Ajit Pawar intended to say that he took entire blame on himself even as it happned with the agreement of his uncle Sharad Pawar. And that specific meeting also saw the presence of Adani.