New Delhi | The Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar (NCP-SP) on Saturday appointed senior leader P C Chacko as its national working president.

Chacko, an old Sharad Pawar loyalist, joined the NCP in 2021 after parting ways with the Congress.

The NCP-SP also appointed Rajiv Jha as the national general secretary of the party in charge of office administration.

Senior leader K K Sharma, who had joined the Ajit Pawar-led NCP, returned to the Sharad Pawar-led outfit. Earlier this week, Dheeraj Sharma, the president of the youth wing of the NCP-SP, joined the Ajit Pawar-led NCP.

The Sharad Pawar-led party, which was registered earlier this year, also decided to celebrate June 10 as its foundation day.

It was on June 10, 1999, that Sharad Pawar, Tariq Anwar and P A Sangma formed the Nationalist Congress Party after they were expelled from the Congress for raising the issue of Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin issue.

Sharad Pawar's nephew Ajit Pawar walked away with a majority of NCP MLAs to join the BJP-Shiv Sena government in Maharashtra led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.

Subsequently, the Election Commission recognised the Ajit Pawar faction as the real NCP and allotted the poll symbol 'clock' to it.

The Sharad Pawar-led faction was allotted the name NCP-SP in February this year.

However, NCP-SP chief Sharad Pawar has decided to celebrate June 10 as the foundation day of the party, contending that it was the day he had formed the NCP.

The Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar-led outfits are locked in a legal battle in the Supreme Court for control of the original NCP.