Pawar skips Maratha rally, again

PUNE: Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar continues to avoid Maratha silent marches as he preferred to travel to Delhi for an "urgent meeting" on Thursday while the community took out a morcha in Baramati -- the Pawar bastion.
Since the marches started on August 9, almost all top Maratha leaders, across party lines, have walked with their community.Former deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar walked in Pune last week, but Sharad Pawar has kept away from the protests. Ajit Pawar's wife Sunetra and son Partha participated in the Baramati morcha on Thursday.
One of the main organisers of these marches told TOI that the Maratha organisations have no communication with Pawar in this regard. "Pawar is not in the loop right from the beginning of our ptotests in Aurangabad. We don't expect any support from him nor are we going to invite him. We have not invited any Maratha community leader to join us," he claimed.
NCP spokesperson Ankush Kakade insisted that it was not necessary for Pawar to walk in the march. "Consider his seniority and age. How do you expect him to walk in a march?", Kakade asked, adding that Pawar has already expressed his support to demands raised by the Maratha community. "Besides he was not in Baramati on Thursday. He had a scheduled programme in Mumbai which he cancelled and went to Delhi for an urgent meeting," said Kakade.
Pawar himself has claimed that he had no "communication" with organizers of the Maratha marches. Recently, speaking in Pandharpur he said, "In the last 50 years, I have not made any compromise with my ideology and even paid a political price by renaming the Marathwada university after Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar and supporting the OBC cause," he had said. Pawar had further added, "For the last 60 years, Maratha leaders have led governments, but have never discriminated against any other caste. We have ensured that all castes get justice." Interestingly, Pawar's earlier statement on Act had said that social demands for scrapping of the Atrocity Act following the Khopardi rape-murder case could not be ignored. He later claimed that his statement was misinterpreted.