Badruddin Ajmal meets Sharad Pawar in Mumbai with aim to float anti-BJP front

GUWAHATI: Dhubri MP and perfume baron Badruddin Ajmal’s AIUDF on Saturday met NCP chief Sharad Pawar in Mumbai, a day after Ajmal and his delegation reached out to Bihar CM Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad in Patna, which party leaders said is an agenda to float an even bigger front of regional forces that will inevitably join hands with Congress.
The AICC and state Congress leadership have blatantly rejected any possibility of joining hands with Ajmal’s party in future, accusing AIUDF of being hand in glove with BJP. But AIUDF leaders claimed that the likes of Nitish and Pawar have full faith in Ajmal.
“Our meeting at the Colaba office of Sharad Pawarji was facilitated by Nitishji. There are ample anti-BJP regional forces like us in the country, which, if united, can be an even bigger challenge to the BJP. If we succeed in floating the united front, Congress will be compelled to take our support before the Lok Sabha polls,” AIUDF general secretary and Mankachar MLA Aminul Islam told TOI from Mumbai.
Though Islam claimed that the meeting with Nitish held at the invitation of the Bihar CM himself on Friday ended on a “positive note”, interaction with Lalu later in the day was a courtesy call. Bihar deputy CM Tejashwi was also present in the meeting, Islam said.
The AIUDF delegation air-dashed to Mumbai on Friday night from Patna. AIUDF chief Badruddin Ajmal, MLAs Karimuddin Barbhuyan, Aminul Islam, Nazrul Haque, Sirajuddin Ajmal along with former MLA Abdur Rahman Ajmal were present in the meeting with Pawar. The meeting lasted for about 45 minutes. “Chalking out plans to resist BJP in the Lok Sabha elections and uniting regional forces that have contradictions with Congress is our goal,” Islam said. “Congress can not go ahead by negating the regional forces. But at this moment AIUDF is not going to appease Congress,” he said.