Talks are underway on a merger between the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) and the Congress, NDTV quoted Maharashtra Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar as saying on Tuesday.
“Those who subscribe to the secular ideals of the Congress and Sharad Pawar are always welcome in our party,” the former opposition leader in the state told the channel.
The talks are in the final stages and are progressing positively, NDTV said citing unnamed sources.
Sharad Pawar founded the Nationalist Congress Party in 1999 after splitting from the Congress over his objections to Sonia Gandhi leading the party. However, the NCP allied with the Congress to form the government in Maharashtra in October 1999.
The Congress and the NCP remained in power in the state until 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena alliance won the Assembly elections.
In 2023, the NCP split into two groups when Sharad Pawar’s nephew Ajit Pawar, along with several party MLAs, joined the Mahayuti coalition government of Maharashtra, consisting of the BJP and the Shiv Sena faction led by Eknath Shinde.
In February 2024, the Election Commission ruled that Ajit Pawar’s faction was the real NCP and assigned it the “clock” symbol.
Ajit Pawar died on January 28 when a small plane crashed near a landing strip in the city of Baramati while attempting to land.
Discussions over a merger between the Congress and the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) come in the backdrop of a series of defections from the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and the Trinamool Congress to the fold of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.
Edited by Sneha.