Tariq Anwar resigned from the party to express his annoyance over his party chief Sharad Pawar’s ‘defence’ of PM Modi on the controversial Rafale fighter jet deal.
Tariq Anwar with Rahul Gandhi. (Photo: Twitter | @INCIndia)
Former Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and national general secretary Tariq Anwar joined the Congress in the presence of party president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday.
In a curious political development, senior NCP leader Tariq Anwar resigned from the party and also from the Lok Sabha to express his annoyance over his party chief Sharad Pawar’s “defence” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the controversial Rafale fighter jet deal.
Making the announcement in his Lok Sabha constituency in Delhi, Anwar last month said, he was resigning from all posts in the party, of which he was a founding member, and also giving up his membership of Parliament.
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Anwar told reporters he was “hurt” by Pawar’s interview to a Marathi news channel this week where he said Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intentions on the Rafale fighter jet aircraft deal were not wrong.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi is completely involved in the deal which has been substantiated by the statement of the former president of France but the former has failed to prove his innocence in the matter. In such a situation defending the Prime Minister by party chief Pawar is really unfortunate,” Anwar told a press conference at Katihar.
Anwar, a former union minister, has been in favour of a JPC probe into the deal, a demand the Congress has raised and has also sought a white paper on the issue.
Anwar, along with Sharad Pawar and PA Sangma, had in 1999 broken away from the Congress to protest against the anointment of a ‘foreign origin person’ – Sonia Gandhi as the party president and floated NCP.
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