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'That was my mistake.'
'Gautam Adani was not involved in forming the Maharashtra government.'
'Adani was not there in the meeting.'
'The meeting was at his guest house and we were sitting in his guest house.'
It is not every day that a politician asks you to be present at 6 am for an interview but if you are Maharashtra Finance Minister and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, you need to be different.
He is up by 6 am and is waiting for media-persons at his house in Sahyog Society, Baramati, which is his bastion, having represented the constituency since 1991. In this election he is pitted against Yugendra Pawar, his brother's son.
"I like to start my day early even though I slept at 3 am last night because of my busy election campaign schedule," the Nationalist Congress Party leader tells Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com in the first of a multi-part interview.
Your interview with Newslaundry stating that Gautam Adani was part of a meeting to form the government has created ripples in state politics.
That was my mistake. Gautam Adani was not involved in forming the Maharashtra government (in 2019).
Gautam Adani was not there in the meeting. The meeting was at his guest house and we were sitting in his guest house.
You faced a huge disappointment in the Lok Sabha elections as only one of your party members got elected. What are you doing to prevent a similar outcome in the assembly elections?
You must be aware that Opposition parties had started a narrative that the ruling party wants to change the Constitution, wants to remove reservations once they get a majority in the Lok Sabha during the elections, which was a fake narrative.
The Opposition then targeted the minority community by stating that the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) wants 400-plus seats in the Lok Sabha because they want India to be declared a Hindu Rashtra after which they will have no right to vote.
Plus, they put the fear in their minds that minorities will be expelled to Bangladesh and Pakistan if the BJP gets 400-plus seats.
This kind of narrative set a panic among the voters of Maharashtra who decided that the ruling alliance, of which I was a partner, must be defeated.
One more reason for our party performing poorly in the elections was the fact that the onion farmers were upset as they couldn't export their yield due to which prices of onions crashed then.
In places like Solapur, Satara, Nashik, Nagar (Ahilya Nagar, formerly known as Ahmednagar) there are many small onion farmers who were upset with the government due to which we paid a heavy price in the elections.
You will be surprised to know that we lost by only 0.6 percent votes against our opponents.
In this election we have geared up and are exposing them on fake narratives like changing of the Constitution, Hindu Rashtra and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
I am telling the minorities that nobody is sending you out of India. We (the Nationalist Congress Party) follow the philosophy of Shahu Mahraj and Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, which is inclusive to its core.
But then your alliance partner the BJP campaigners like Yogi Adityanath state that 'batogey toh katogey' (if Hindus are divided they will be destroyed if the BJP loses).
I have opposed this statement openly.
I have said such statements can work in North India, but not in a state like Maharashtra. If you go to Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Goa or Telangana, such statements do not work.
How much are you ideologically aligned to the BJP which talks of Hindutva?
The NCP was in alliance with the Shiv Sena after Uddhav Thackeray became chief minister. At that time, from 2019 to the next two-and-a-half years we ruled the state.
At that time the Congress too was in our alliance.
All three parties have different ideologies, but yet we came together and ran the government. We worked on a common minimum programme and ran the government.
In the same way now we have come together with the BJP for the development of Maharashtra under the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Be it the bullet train, seaports, airports or any other such huge infrastructure projects, then you need the help of the central government. In order to make Maharashtra the number one state in India, we joined hands with the BJP to rule the state.
You launched the Laadki Bahin project as Maharashtra finance minister. Don't you think Chief minister Eknath Shinde is taking credit for it rather than you?
This scheme is of the Mahayuti government in total and not that of any of the parties that is part of the government.
We took yatras before the scheme was launched. My partY's junior minister Aditi Tatkare, who is the women and child development minister, she got active to ensure the linkup of Aadhar with bank accounts was activated in time so that every woman in Maharashtra gets the benefit of the Laadki Bahin scheme.
It has had an impressive effect on the ground as women are happy to get Rs 1,500 in their bank account every month. Will the Laadki Bahin scheme be a gamechanger in the elections as everyone says?
Yes, I think so. Laadki Bahin will be a gamechanger for the Mahayuti alliance in the elections.
When we launched the scheme the Opposition blamed us stating that Maharashtra has no money and our government was emptying the coffers. They said it was chunavi jumla (election stunt) but money started pouring in through direct bank transfers to women from July.
And when the Opposition saw money actually pouring in they started the counter-argument, what is going to change with Rs 1,500 per month for a poor woman?
Only a poor woman understands the value of the Laadki Bahin scheme. She knows the value of Rs 1,500 per month given by the government.
VIDEO: Watch Ajit Pawar speak on Laadki Bahin scheme
Is it not bad economics to give freebies, and that too in cash?
Look at it this way.
Rs 1,500 per month translates into Rs 50 per day. If you buy a cup of tea in Mumbai that cost comes to Rs 50 in many places.
To uplift poverty and raise the living standards of poor people the government will have to bring one or the other schemes like Laadki Bahin.