New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday by calling him the "biggest patron of corruption" after Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar, along with eight others from the party, joined the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government.
While Pawar was sworn in as the deputy chief minister by Governor Ramesh Bais at a ceremony held in the Raj Bhawan in Mumbai, the eight other NCP leaders took oath as ministers. Those who were sworn in as ministers are Chhagan Bhujbal, Dilip Walse Patil, Hasan Mushrif, Dhananjay Munde, Aditi Tatkare, Dharmarao Atram, Anil Patil and Sanjay Bansode.
Reacting to the development, AAP national spokesperson Sanjay Singh hit out at the prime minister on Twitter. "Narendra Modi is the biggest patron of corruption in the country," the Rajya Sabha MP said in a tweet in Hindi. Two days after the prime minister gave a guarantee of action against corruption, Pawar was appointed as the deputy chief minister in the Shiv Sena-BJP coalition government in Maharashtra and Bhujbal also inducted into the cabinet, Singh said. "Today all TV channels will condemn Modiji," he claimed.
Earlier in the day, Ajit Pawar met some party leaders and MLAs at his official residence 'Devgiri' in Mumbai.
Senior NCP leader Bhujbal and party's working president Supriya Sule were among the leaders present at the meeting. However, Sule left the meeting early. NCP president Sharad Pawar, who was in Pune, said he was unaware of the meeting.
After the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly polls, the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena snapped ties with long-term ally BJP. Later, Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar were sworn in as the chief minister and deputy CM respectively in a hush-hush ceremony at the Raj Bhawan, but their government lasted only 80 hours. Thackeray subsequently tied-up with the NCP and Congress to form the MVA government. In June last year, the revolt led by Shinde led to a split in the Shiv Sena and collapse of the MVA government, following which Shinde became the CM with BJP's support.
