Devendra Fadnavis Denies Allegations, Says Gautam Adani Never Attended Their Meetings

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday rubbished reports that industrialist Gautam Adani was in any discussions about a possible BJP-NCP government formation in the state after the Assembly elections in 2019. This comes after NCP leader Ajit Pawar accused leaders from both the BJP and his own NCP of attending talks hosted by Adani at his Delhi residence, only to retract his statement later admitting he had “made a mistake”.

Fadnavis confirmed that a meeting did indeed take place between BJP and NCP leaders, but he was categorical that Adani had no role to play in it. “See, the meeting had happened. Sharad Pawar, Ajit Pawar, (Union Home Minister) Amit Shah, and I were there. But, Gautam Adani was not there,” he said to India Today’s Anjana Om Kashyap.

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Earlier, in an interview with Newslaundry and The News Minute, Ajit Pawar has said that he, Fadnavis, Amit Shah, Sharad Pawar, and Praful Patel were involved in government formation discussions with Adani attending the meeting. Sharad Pawar too repeated the statement while speaking to the press claiming that it is Adani who hosted the meeting. However, in a turnaround reaction during an interview with ANI, Ajit Pawar has withdrawn his statement clarifying that he made a mistake and that when they were at Adani’s guest house, “there is no role of an industrialist in state government formation.”
Ajit Pawar clarified that he was not forced into making the statement.

In 2019, Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar had briefly formed a government, with Fadnavis as the Chief Minister and Ajit Pawar as the Deputy CM, that survived for 80 hours only. The NCP then relented and returned Ajit Pawar and along with Congress and Shiv Sena joined the Maha Vikas Aghadi government. In 2022, the coalition broke up following a rebellion led by Eknath Shinde, who became Chief Minister of the new government with Fadnavis as his deputy. A year later, NCP MLA Ajit Pawar jumped into the ruling coalition, and he again became the Deputy Chief Minister.

Maharashtra Assembly polls will be held on November 20, whose results will come out on November 23. This is the first election after the split between Shiv Sena and NCP.