I will stay with NCP, reports about my political moves completely baseless: Ajit Pawar

NEW DELHI: Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and former deputy chief minister of Maharashtra Ajit Pawar on Tuesday dismissed reports of him joining the BJP with his supporters and slammed those spreading rumours against him.
"There is no truth behind these speculations. I am with the NCP and will stay with the party," Ajit Pawar said while briefing media amid reports of rift within the party.
"The news going around about my political moves is completely baseless. There is an attempt to create confusion about me," the junior Pawar asserted as he played down reports of switching to BJP.
Ajit Pawar also denied taking signatures of any MLA of his party.
After the assembly elections in 2019, Ajit Pawar had teamed up with BJP's Devendra Fadnavis to form a government which had lasted less than 80 hours.
This, after Uddhav Thackeray, who had contested elections with the BJP, had walked out of the NDA amid differences over the post of chief minister.
Rumours about Ajit Pawar's next political move started last week after he suddenly cancelled his scheduled meetings. The junior Pawar also made some comments which were seen as being soft on the BJP and PM Modi.
Dismissing the opposition's campaign over PM Modi's degree, Ajit Pawar had said that it was Prime Minister's charisma that had helped him win elections after elections and the degree issue held no relevance in electoral politics.
Earlier today, Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar had also dismissed speculation about his nephew's next political move and said no meeting of NCP MLAs has been called by anyone.
"...There is no importance of all these discussions. The reports have no meaning. Somebody is trying to create news. I can say about NCP that all our colleagues are of one thinking of how to make the party stronger, and there is no other thought in anybody's mind," the NCP chief said.