Injured tiger is far more dangerous: Rohit Pawar vows fightback by MVA

Meanwhile, Maharashtra Congress President Nana Patole said that the EC's decision to award the NCP party and symbol to Ajit Pawar was written by the central government, the Election Commission only announced it.

Mumbai: An injured tiger is far more dangerous, Karjat Jamkhed MLA Rohit Pawar said on Wednesday and posted a photo of Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray, indicating that the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi, which is the opposition I.N.D.I.A. bloc, is planning a big fight in Maharashtra.

Leaders of the two parties are separately slated to tour the state extensively, and also with the Congress together in the run up to the 2024 Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha polls.

The jolt to Thackeray, who was the Chief Minister and then Shiv Sena President and Pawar, the NCP founder and four-time Chief Minister, was a significant one but they would stage a comeback in the polls, MVA leaders said on Wednesday.

The Facebook post of Rohit Pawar, the grandnephew of Sharad Pawar and nephew of Supriya Sule and now NCP President and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, went viral.

"Today, even if the party and the symbol have been hijacked by misusing the power, the father of the party is with us," he posted in X.

Social media posts like “Our Party, Our Symbol: Sharadchandra Govindrao Pawar” went viral even as a poster reading “Chinha Tumara, Baap Hamara” was put up outside the NCP state headquarters at the Ballard Estate area of Mumbai.

The MVA allies rallied behind Sharad Pawar and his daughter Supriya Sule, the MP from Baramati.

Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Vijay Wadettiwar said that the order of the EC was on expected lines. "Sharad Pawar is not going to lose anything by this decision. This day needs to be observed as black day, there is no democracy left here," said Wadettiwar, a senior Congress leader.

"When the Election Commission itself starts to legitimise theft, you know that democracy is doomed. The election commission has now once again proved to be the fraud that it is, entirely compromised (EC). They are now showing everyone that we aren’t a free and fair democracy anymore," Worli MLA and former minister Aaditya Thackeray said.

Maharashtra Congress President Nana Patole said that the EC's decision to award the NCP party and symbol to Ajit Pawar was written by the central government, the Election Commission only announced it.

“A few months ago BJP National President J P Nadda had said that no regional party would exist in the country. After that, the central agencies and the Election Commission have started eliminating regional parties at the behest of the Narendra Modi government. What happened earlier with the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party is a kind of killing of democracy,” said Patole.