NCP (SP) president Sharad Pawar has said he led the move to topple the Maharashtra government headed by Vasantdada Patil in 1978, but the same leader proposed his name for the chief minister's post a decade later, reported news agency PTI.

That was the kind of "large-hearted leadership" the Congress had at the time, Pawar, who had a long stint in the opposition party, said at an event in Pune on Saturday.

Pawar snapped ties with the Congress in 1999 and co-founded the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). In July 2023, the NCP split after Sharad Pawar's nephew Ajit Pawar joined the then Shiv Sena-BJP coalition government.