NCP chief Sharad Pawar on Tuesday said the row over the issue of the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank (MSCB) will not have any impact on the ties between his party and the Congress in the state.
The Union agriculture minister also indicated that his party and the Congress would contest the local body elections scheduled by 2011-end separately.
Mr Pawar’s remarks are significant given the fact that the supercession of the board of directors of the MSCB had put the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on the war path with its Congress ally once again.
The NCP leaders have so far maintained that the supercession is a political move, which comes ahead of the local bodies polls later this year.
The Congress was trying to weaken the NCP which has a good following in the rural areas of the state by discrediting the bank it controlled, was their refrain.
Mr Pawar said that the action of the RBI against the apex cooperative bank in the state had come on the basis of the 2008-9 annual report in spite of the fact that it had taken corrective measures in 2009-10.
He also claimed that the bank had taken certain actions like giving funds for the Monopoly Cotton Procurement Scheme under a directive from the then Congress chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. He said that there have been provisions of the supercession of the board if the state governments orders are not followed.
On the local body polls, he said that the decision and discussions on it are taken at the local level.
“Last time too, there were discussions between the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party and the two parties had fought separately,” he said.