Praful Patel pitches for NCP chief as PM

The NCP may be down at the hustings, but for the party faithful, their chief and former union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar is still not out of reckoning for the country’s top job.

Senior NCP leader and former union minister Praful Patel hinted that Pawar was in the race to become India’s Prime Minister in 2019.

“The year 2019 will be the year of the NCP and the year of our saheb. I am telling you, in tomorrow’s politics, journalists please take note... our aspirations for saheb are not impossible to achieve, it can happen,” said Patel, who was speaking on Monday at a two-day conclave of the party at Karjat.

The NCP has just four Lok Sabha MPs from Maharashtra and ended up as a poor fourth in the 2014 state assembly elections with just 41 seats, one less than former ally, the Congress. In the recent municipal elections, it also lost power in its erstwhile strongholds like Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad and the Sangli Zilla Parishad.