Pune: NCP (SCP) chief Sharad Pawar has been advised four days of rest as he is experiencing speaking difficulty due to coughs, a party leader said on Saturday. Pawar has cancelled all upcoming tours due to this.
The octogenarian politician on Thursday addressed an event at Vasantdada Sugar Institute in Pune despite his ill health. He coughed frequently during his 18-minute speech.
"Sharad Pawarji is experiencing difficulty in speaking due to persistent cough, as a result of which all his scheduled programmes over the next four days have been cancelled," Prashant Jagtap, Pune city NCP (SP) president, said.
Pawar was on a tour of Sangli and Kolhapur in Western Maharashtra for the past two days. He was experiencing difficulty in addressing the rallies organised during the tour.
Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday took a dig at Pawar, saying that just doing marketing is not adequate to become a leader, and groundwork is also necessary. "Pawar Saheb, you were agriculture minister for 10 years. At that time, you had the cooperative sector. What did you do for the sugar factories and the cooperative movement in Maharashtra? What have you done for farmers?" Shah asked.
Shah was speaking at a cooperative conference where he listed out a slew of works done by the BJP-led government at the Centre for the Cooperative Sector. "Our government has done the work of reducing the tax of Rs 46,000 crore on cooperative sugar factories in Maharashtra and has given loans to cooperative sugar mills. Besides, these mills have become revenue-earning ventures due to the ethanol blending initiative. The computerisation of primary agricultural cooperative societies has been done on a large scale," he said.
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