Pune:
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar on Friday admitted that one of the reasons for the poor performance of the ruling coalition in the state in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections was farmers’ discontent over low onion prices and other related issues. He said the Shiv Sena-BJP-NCP alliance had to pay the price of farmers’ discontent in the state’s onion-growing region, including Nashik, and the ruling coalition’s performance there was poor.
“Onions made us cry in Nashik, soybeans and cotton made us cry in Marathwada and Vidarbha,” Shinde said.
Talking to reporters here, Ajit Pawar said that he has been constantly talking about the need for price support for onion and the interests of both farmers and consumers should be kept in mind.
He said, “During a visit to New Delhi, we told Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, Cooperation Minister Amit Bhai Shah about onion (the defeat in the Mahayutti election). There was a lot of resentment among onion farmers in the state and we had to pay the price in the Lok Sabha elections.
After the Center imposed a ban on onion exports in December last year to control retail prices, farmers, especially in Nashik region, protested. Due to this ban, the price of onion has come down. The ban was finally lifted in early May.
In the Lok Sabha elections, the coalition’s constituents BJP, Shiv Sena and NCP won nine, seven and one seats respectively in Maharashtra. On the other hand, the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi has won 30 of the 48 seats in the state. Maha Vikas Aghadi consists of Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SP).
Shiv Sena and its ally BJP lost Nashik and Dindori Lok Sabha seats respectively. The alliance won only one seat in Marathwada and only two in Vidarbha.
(This news is not edited by the NDTV team. It is published directly from the syndicate feed.)