NCP chief to kick off statewide tour Tuesday

Mumbai: Seventy-nine-year-old Sharad Pawar will kick off a statewide outreach drive on Tuesday in order to reach out to his party’s rank and file, even as several prominent leaders have jumped ship. The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief will now focus on direct dialogue with the party’s grass-roots activists.

The NCP announced the tour on Saturday in the backdrop of an exodus of key leaders to the ruling BJP and Shiv Sena.

While NCP MP Udayanraje Bhosale joined the BJP on Saturday, the party’s former ministers Ganesh Naik, Sachin Ahir and Jaydutt Kshirsagar; and MLAs Shivendrasinh Bhosale, Bhaskar Jadhav, Sandip Naik and Vaibhav Pichad — to name a few — switched their allegiance to the saffron alliance recently.

Mr Pawar will visit ten districts — Solapur, Osmanabad, Beed, Latur, Hingoli, Parbhani, Jalna, Aurangabad, Ahmednagar and Satara — in the first phase of the tour, the NCP said on Twitter.

The NCP chief will review the situation on the ground and interact with younger leaders to contest the Assembly elections.

“Mr Pawar’s tour will be crucial in view of the prevailing circumstances. His interaction with grass-roots workers, who have remained loyal to the party even as some leaders have deserted it, will boost their morale,” said an NCP leader.

Mr Pawar had fanned parts of his home state during the April-May Lok Sabha elections and addressed around 80 public rallies. The NCP had managed to retain its 2014 tally of four LS seats in Maharashtra.

The NCP is fighting the upcoming Assembly elections in alliance with the Congress and some smaller parties.