Baramati, 17 Feb

Nationalist Congress Party founder Sharad Pawar on Saturday said the verdicts given by the Election Commission and Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar on the NCP matter were "unfair", and his faction would approach the Supreme Court to get back the party name and symbol.

The Sharad Pawar-led group - now officially named as NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) - suffered a setback on Thursday after speaker Narwekar held that the faction led by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, was the real NCP. He also rejected the disqualification petitions filed by both the rival groups against each other's MLAs.

The ruling came days after the Election Commission held the Ajit Pawar-led faction as the real NCP and allotted him the party name and symbol 'clock'. "We had anticipated such a decision. The assembly speaker failed to maintain the dignity of his position. The decisions taken by the Election Commission and the speaker are unfair. Therefore, we are approaching the Supreme Court over the issue of the NCP name and symbol," Sharad Pawar

told reporters in his hometown Baramati in Pune district.

"Those who formed the party were removed from it. This has never happened before. This decision was not right as per the judicial system. We have approached the Supreme Court over this issue. The entire country knows who founded the party," he added.

When asked about former chief minister and Congress veteran Ashok Chavan joining the BJP, he said, "These days, the effect of multiple agencies, such as ACB and ED, has increased and it can be clearly seen how they are being used against the Opposition."

On the issue of Maratha reservation, the former Union minister said a large number of people were supporting activist Manoj Jarange, who has been on an indefinite fast since February 10 to press for the demand for inclusion of the Maratha community into the Other Backward Class (OBC) category. "The government should take a reasonable and concrete stand over the issue of Maratha reservation and Jarange," he said.

NCP suffered a split in July last year after Sharad Pawar's nephew Ajit Pawar and eight MLAs joined the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government. The NCP was founded by Sharad Pawar in 1999.