Governor's book 'omits' Fadnavis-Ajit Pawar 80-hr govt swearing-in

NCP President Sharad Pawar with Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari

Nationalist Congress Party President Sharad Pawar took a swipe at Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyaris coffee table book which has a stark omission -- the early morning swearing-in ceremony of Devendra Fadnavis-Ajit Pawar as Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister last year.

Pawar thanked the Governor for the book, ‘Janrajyapal: Bhagat Singh Koshyari', published by Raj Bhavan as Koshyari completed his first year in office last month.

In a Marathi letter penned last week to the Governor, laced with oodles of sarcasm, Pawar ‘thanked' Koshyari for the coffee table book but said that the title of ‘Janrajyapal' was not a constitutional position.

"I sincerely thank the state government for sending me a well designed coffee table book, which sheds light on your limited tenure of one year, even though there is no mention of ‘Janrajyapal' in the actual Indian Constitution," said Pawar.

After a perusal of the book, the NCP leader also found that it had omitted pictures of "a particular swearing-in ceremony" held at Raj Bhavan last year.

"When I previewed the coffee table book, it revealed the photographs of ceremonies - except a particular swearing-in ceremony - receptions, consecration ceremonies, meetings of dignitaries, and your participation in them, except for a limited period of time," Sharad Pawar said.

The reference was clearly to the unprecedented early morning swearing-in ceremony (November 23, 2019) when Koshyari administered the oath of office to Fadnavis as CM and Ajit Pawar as Deputy CM, stunning the entire country.

Mocking further, Pawar said any mention of Koshyari's letter earlier this month questioning Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray‘s ‘Hindutva' and ‘secular' credentials was also missing from the book.

"The advice given by you to the CM regarding secularism and the subsequent disapproval of those remarks by the Hon'ble Union Home Minister (Amit Shah) is not recorded in this information book," Pawar added.

He signed off with a ‘thank you again' "for sending (me) an account of your historic career".

However, when contacted, Raj Bhavan and NCP officials were not available for comments on Pawar's letter.

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