Prashant Kishor meets Sharad Pawar for 3rd time in fortnight

New Delhi: Poll strategist Prashant Kishor on Wednesday met Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) supremo Sharad Pawar at his residence, for the third time in a fortnight, and a day after members of eight political parties met there.

According to sources, the meeting of Pawar and Kishor lasted for over an hour. The frequent Kishor-Pawar meetings have been fuelling speculations on the creation of a third front to combat the BJP.

Earlier Kishor, whose latest success has been the victory of the Trinamool Congress in the recently-concluded West Bengal Assembly polls, had met Pawar at his Mumbai residence on June 11 and once again on Monday in Delhi at the NCP leader's residence.

After members of the eight political parties had met at Pawar's residence for over two and a half hours on Tuesday, the NCP, however, sought to clarify that the meeting was not called by the party supremo but the Rashtra Manch of former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha.

NCP's former Rajya Sabha member Majeed Memon said that "speculation is in media that Sharad Pawar has called the meet, which is not correct". He said this meeting was called by the Rashtra Manch and was only organised at the residence of Pawar.

Memon also dismissed as a "wrong perception" that it was an opposition meet, excluding the Congress, or a 'third front' meet.

Leaders of several parties including Trinamool Congress' Sinha, Samajwadi Party's Ghanshyam Tiwari, Rashtriya Lok Dal President Jayant Chaudhary, Aam Aadmi Party's Sushil Gupta, CPI-M's Nilotpal Basu, CPI's Binoy Viswam, National Conference's Farooq Abdullah, former Congress leader Sanjay Jha and former JD-U leader Pavan Verma were present.

Other prominent personalities like Justice A.P. Shah, Javed Akhtar and former diplomat K.C. Singh also attended.