Amravati, Maharashtra:

NCP (SP) leader Sharad Pawar on Monday claimed that former prime ministers worked to build a new India but Prime Minister Narendra Modi only criticizes others and does not speak about what his government has done for the people in the last ten years. What have you done?

Addressing a campaign rally in Amravati for the Maha Vikas Aghadi candidate, Mr Pawar said former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s contribution to the country could not be questioned.

He claimed that some BJP leaders had publicly talked about changing the Constitution and appealed to the people not to allow autocracy to take shape in India.

A high-profile electoral battle is shaping up in Amravati Lok Sabha constituency, where the BJP has fielded sitting MP Navneet Rana, who won the 2019 election as an independent candidate, against Congress’s Balwant Wankhede.

Mr Pawar alleged that PM Modi was trying to create fear and was emulating Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Mr Pawar said he had come to apologize to the people of Amravati for the “mistake” they had committed by supporting the candidate (Navneet Rana) in the 2019 elections.

“In the last elections, I had sought people’s support and appealed (to elect Rana). People chose the candidate for whom I had appealed. It is time to correct that mistake,” he said.

Wankhede, who is from the Congress, is contesting the elections as a candidate of the tripartite Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), which includes Shiv Sena (UBT), NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) and Congress.

“After Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, I saw the work of almost all the Prime Ministers from Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao to Manmohan Singh. Their efforts were to build a new India, but the current Prime Minister only criticizes,” Mr Pawar Said said.

He said that no one can forget the contribution of former PM Jawaharlal Nehru in history but the Prime Minister (Modi) continuously criticizes him.

Mr Pawar said, “Instead of explaining what the central government did in the last ten years, he (Modi) keeps criticizing others.”

“We fear that a new Putin is being created in India,” he said.

He praised the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) for “taking up the responsibility of protecting the national interest” by working closely with the Congress and the NCP (SP) like in the past.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)