NCP chief Sharad Pawar on Tuesday called on home minister Amit Shah and discussed issues related to pricing of sugar and ethanol blending in petrol. Pawar was accompanied by National State Cooperative Sugar Factories Federation chairman Jayprakash Dandegaonkar.

Pawar told reporters after the meeting that they discussed the current selling price of sugar, which is even lower than the cost of production, and requested the government to look into it. Pawar, a former agriculture minister, said he also talked about the need to increase the blending of ethanol in petroleum products.

Pawar tweeted: “Had a brief meeting with Union cooperation minister Amit shah in New Delhi along with Jaiprakash Dandegaonkar and Prakash Naiknavare to discuss issues faced by the sugar cooperative sector”. He further tweeted, “Firstly I congratulated Amit Shah on being appointed as the first cooperation minister of India. During the meeting we discussed the current sugar scenario of the country and problems occurring due to excessive sugar production”.

The NCP chief called on Shah on a day when the opposition parties held a joint meeting, called by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, over an ongoing deadlock in Parliament. Though party leaders from NCP and BJP have maintained that meetings of their senior leaders had no political context, speculations gain significance in view of the ongoing differences among the partners of the Shiv Sena-led MVA government in Maharashtra. On July 17, Pawar had called on PM Narendra Modi, which he termed a “courtesy meeting”.