A day after Sharad Pawar criticised the Shiv Sena-led Maharashtra government for allowing the transfer of the Elgar Parishad case probe to the NIA, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and the NCP president on Saturday praised each other at a farmers' rally in Jalgaon district. On Friday, Pawar had told reporters in Kolhapur that it was not right on part of the Centre to hand over the Elgar Parishad case probe to the NIA from Pune police. In a swipe at the state government, of which the NCP is a part, Pawar had said, "It was not right for the Centre to hand over the investigation into the case to the NIA. But it was even more wrong for the state government to support the transfer of the case."

Speaking at the rally held in Muktainagar in the district on Saturday, Pawar praised Thackeray's photography skills. "Maharashtra got a good photographer who spotted a tiger like Chandrakant Patil," he said referring to local independent MLA Chandrakant Patil who had defeated BJP stalwart Eknath Khadse's daughter in the October, 2019 assembly elections. To this Thackeray replied, without naming Khadse, "Since there was a tiger like Chandrakant Patil, everybody ran away."