The Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress are running the MVA government in Maharashtra together under the leadership of Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar said here on Monday.
He made the remarks while replying to Maharashtra BJP president Chandrakant Patil's comment that the NCP is running the MVA government.
"In the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), under the leadership of Uddhav Thackeray, all of us are running the government together. Thackeray's role is important in that. The NCP and Congress are supporting him," Pawar told reporters.
Pawar also asked reporters to not attach "too much importance" to BJP MP Sujay Vikhe Patil's reported comment that the MVA alliance was akin to a marriage where the NCP was husband, Sena was the silent wife and the Congress was the uninvited guest.
Those who have nothing better to do engage themselves in passing comments, Pawar said, and asked the media to instead give importance to the decisions the state government was taking.
Queried on media reports of the Income Tax department, which is investigating BMC standing committee chairman Yashwant Jadhav, finding a diary with an entry that says gifts worth Rs two crores were given to 'Matoshree', Pawar said a lot of people call their mothers matoshree.
Incidentally, Jadhav has defended himself saying the 'matoshree" in the entry referred to his mother, though speculation persists among detractors as 'Matoshree' is also the name of Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray's private residence in Mumbai's Bandra area.
"A lot of people call their own mothers 'matoshree', don't they? Some people call their mothers 'aai', some call 'matoshree'. He (Jadhav) himself is saying so, why are you then playing it up?" the deputy CM asked.
To Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan's reported statement on Sunday that a refinery-cum-petrochemicals complex (RPC) project, currently stalled in Nanar in Ratnagiri, could be revived as the Maharashtra government seemed to be changing its mind on it, Pawar said such decisions are taken at the CM's level.
Pawar said he could speak with authority on the subject only after discussing it with the CM.
