In an interview with Newslaundry and The News Minute, Sharad Pawar confirmed industrialist Gautam Adani hosted a high-profile meeting in 2019, in which the possibility of the Nationalist Congress Party supporting the Bharatiya Janata Party was on the menu.
The senior Pawar told Sreenivasan Jain that the meeting was held in Adani’s home in Delhi. Present, he said, were Gautam Adani, Home Minister Amit Shah, Ajit Pawar and Sharad Pawar himself.
Pawar’s comments are likely to further stoke the escalating political controversy in Maharashtra after Ajit Pawar sensationally told Newslaundry and The News Minute in an interview about the meeting at Gautam Adani’s residence.
The revelations drew sharp criticism from opposition parties in Maharashtra, which goes to the polls on November 20. They alleged this confirms their allegations – that the Modi government is an ‘Adani ki Sarkar’ and that the business tycoon is assisting the BJP in engineering defections. To recap, in November 2019, Ajit Pawar made his first attempt to “split” the NCP by departing with a handful of MLAs to form a government with the BJP. Ajit was sworn in as deputy chief minister for 80 hours, after which the majority of MLAs returned to the NCP, and the alliance collapsed. He finally split the party in July 2023.
So, why did Sharad Pawar agree to the 2019 meeting?
The senior Pawar said his party colleagues, many of whom faced cases from central agencies, told him they had been assured that if they crossed over to the BJP, the cases would go away. Pawar says he pushed back as he wasn’t convinced the BJP would keep its promise. His colleagues said, “Why not hear it from the horse’s mouth?”
And that, he said, is how he found himself at a dinner in Gautam Adani’s residence with Amit Shah present. Sharad Pawar said Adani “was not participating in the political discussion” but hosted the dinner.
But why was Adani’s home chosen as the venue for such a high-stakes meeting? And what was India’s home minister doing there?
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This story was originally published in Newslaundry and can be accessed here.