While admitting that there were too many rebels in the fray in the Maharashtra Assembly elections because the ruling Congress-NCP combine delayed announcing a formal pre-poll alliance, NCP chief and Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said he hoped many of them would withdraw soon.

“This time the decision was late, because of which too many people are in the fray,” Pawar told The Indian Express. “The picture will be clear after the date of withdrawals (September 29). Another factor behind the deluge of aspirants, said the Union minister, was the delimitation of constituencies.

On the possibility of multi-cornered contests in many constituencies because of the presence of the Republican Left Democratic Front (RLDF) and Prakash Ambedkar’s Bharatiya Republican Party-Bahujan Mahasangh in the fray, Pawar said that it would not cause a significant problem. He said that while the Third Front wouldn’t be able to make much of a difference, Ambedkar’s party was confined to just two districts.

Referring to the drought situation in the state, Pawar said, “The situation has improved after the last rains... the tension we had two months ago does not exist anymore. After the decrease in the area under rice cultivation by 62 lakh hectares we need to grow rice, wherever water is available.” Importing rice was not necessary, he added.

He said that he had instructed agriculture officers that whatever was lost during the kharif season had to be recovered in the rabi season, “with a major thrust on growing wheat, rice, pulses and oilseeds.”

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