PUNE: Former cabinet minister Harshvardhan Patil announced on Friday that he will be joining Sharad Pawar 's NCP after quitting the BJP . Harshvardhan is expected to contest the Indapur seat from NCP (SCP) in the upcoming assembly elections . "I recently had a meeting with Sharad Pawar at his residence in Mumbai, where Baramati MP Supriya Sule was also present.
During our one-and-a-half-hour-long meeting, Pawar said that he has reviewed the Indapur constituency and, based on that review, he offered me to join his party. I told him that I would make the decision only after discussing it with my supporters in Indapur. Today, I held that discussion, and based on their response, I have decided to join Sharad Pawar's NCP," Harshvardhan said in Indapur on Friday.
Representing a politically strong family from Pune district's Indapur tehsil, Harshvardhan served as a minister in successive govts from 1995 to 2014. However, his political career received a major jolt in the 2014 assembly elections when the then-Congressman Harshvardhan was defeated by NCP's Datta Bharne. Later in 2019, just before the assembly polls, he joined the BJP but once again faced defeat at the hands of Bharne in the assembly polls.
While Harshvardhan was trying to recover lost ground in the Indapur assembly before the 2024 assembly polls, his political equations were disturbed when the NCP split into two and the Ajit Pawar faction joined the Mahayuti govt. Ajit Pawar's entry into the alliance led to a dispute b.