In March, Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) MLA Rohit Pawar travelled to Delhi to meet Leader of Opposition (LoP) Rahul Gandhi to submit documents and garner support for the demand for a fair, transparent investigation into the aircraft crash that had killed his uncle and Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar just over a month earlier.
The meeting between the two lasted more than an hour and the young NCP (SP) leader — the grandson of Sharad Pawar’s elder brother Dinkarrao — also met Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and senior leader K C Venugopal. One of the leaders is learnt to have assured Rohit to “keep on fighting; the time of our ideology will surely come”.
Days later, unable to register an FIR in the aircraft crash case in Maharashtra, Rohit travelled to Bengaluru — in a Congress-governed state — and got a zero FIR registered at the High Grounds police station. A zero FIR can be filed at any police station, no matter where the crime actually occurred or the area that holds legal jurisdiction.
Since then, the rumours have only intensified. The young NCP (SP) MLA’s growing proximity to the Congress was apparent when he put out hundreds of posters welcoming Gandhi to Pune for his “Chhatron ki Goonj” event.