Sharad Pawar hits out at AAP, calls them "pseudo activists"

MUMBAI: Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar on Monday said that a “weak” political leadership has given rise to a bunch of “pseudo activists” who have no connect with the ground reality, a remark that is being seen as a dig at both the Congress party and the Aam Admi Party.

Speaking to ET a day after Congress suffered a rout in four out of five states that went to polls and debutant Aam Admi Party emerged a close second in Delhi, Pawar said people want a strong leader who can take decisions and stick to them.

Pawar’s comments are significant as his Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) is one of the oldest allies of the Congress, which heads the UPA at the Centre. NCP is also part of the Congressled government in Maharashtra.

“The weakness of the leadership has given rise to pseudo activists,” Pawar said. “These people influence not only media but also people in government. They come up with unrealistic ideas and an impression is created that they are representing people’s feelings.

This is a false impression. Whenever there was a strong and decisive leadership, such as the leadership of Indira Gandhi, such forces never came to the fore”.

Pawar said the outcome of the assembly elections will force political parties in power to do serious introspection and understand why the youth of the country are angry.

“There is no doubt that the outcome of polls in four out of five states has shown that people have vented out their anger,” he said. “The youth is particularly angry. We will have to do introspection. Not just the Congress party but we (NCP), too, will have to seriously think about what went wrong. One lesson we have learnt is that when the people in power don’t have confidence, other power centers are likely to rise.”

Pawar said, “The AAP was saying that prices of onions will be brought to half the level if they came to power, I want to remind all that the prices of onions and other food are not controlled by the state. It depends on certain things like drought.”