Dropped minister to head NCP in Maharashtra

The NCP has nominated former minister Bhaskar Jadhav as the chief of its Maharashtra unit on Saturday.

Jadhav, a legislator from Guhagar in Ratnagiri, is the first NCP chief from the Konkan, and will have Jitendra Avhad, MLA from Mumbra in Thane as the party’s first working president. Jadhav was dropped as the minister of state for urban development in the recent cabinet reshuffle.

Mumbai, Thane, and the three districts of the Konkan region have 13 of Maharashtra’s 48 Lok Sabha seats and 75 of the 288 assembly segments but the NCP has just two MPs and 13 MLAs in the region. A senior NCP leader said Jadhav and Avhad’s appointments  were because they both hail from the region. “I will request the people of Konkan to support the NCP,” said Jadhav.

Jadhav, a three-term Shiv Sena MLA, rebelled against his party in 2004 after being denied nomination from Chiplun in Ratnagiri and later joined the NCP, where he was elected as a MLC. In 2009, Jadhav defeated the then leader of the opposition Ramdas Kadam of the Sena from Guhagar. Jadhav recently made ripples by criticising Sena president Uddhav Thackeray and his son Aaditya in public.

Meanwhile, Avhad, a flamboyant leader, rose into prominence as a youth leader and was a two-term MLC before being elected to the assembly from Mumbra in Thane.

Speaking at the party’s executive committee meeting, Pawar urged leaders that they would have to contest for the Lok Sabha in case the party wanted them to and Pawar and his nephew and deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar tried to iron out disgruntlement in the party over the recent reshuffle which saw six ministers make way for new faces. Ajit stressed the need for proper co-ordination with the Congress.

The new chief
Last February, Bhaskar Jadhav raked up a controversy by hosting a lavish wedding for his son and daughter in Chiplun, Ratnagiri. Over 100,000 people were invited, a plush 5,00,000 square feet marquee was erected and 22 helipads were constructed for guests to reach the venue where a 60-course dinner was laid out for them.

NCP president Sharad Pawar had publicly blasted the opulent wedding at a time when the state was facing its severest water scarcity in four decades.