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This is an archive article published on March 31, 2024

Baramati MP Supriya Sule: Sunetra Pawar is like my mother, BJP has caused a split in our family

Supriya Sule also says the Lok Sabha election fight in Baramati, between her and her sister-in-law, is ideological and not personal.

Supriya Sule, Sunetra Pawar,Sule (left) had earlier refused to even mention Sunetra’s name in the context of the Lok Sabha elections. (Photo: Sunetra Pawar/ Instagram)

In her first comment about her sister-in-law’s candidature for Maharashtra’s Baramati Lok Sabha seat, sitting MP Supriya Sule of the Sharad Pawar-led NCP described Sunetra Pawar on Sunday as being like her mother and accused the ruling BJP of causing a split in the Pawar family.

BJP leaders who are campaigning in Baramati are claiming that they want to defeat Sharad Pawar. This clearly shows that BJP does not want to ensure the development of Baramati. They only want to defeat Sharad Pawar. They didn’t have a candidate. And so they decided to cause a split in our family. They made our own family member stand for the election. The wife of an elder brother whom we address as Vahini is like a mother. This is in our culture… The BJP has fielded our mother against me,” Sule said while speaking to reporters in her constituency.

Sule had earlier refused to even mention Sunetra’s name in the context of the Lok Sabha elections. Instead, she had repeatedly said that everyone has the right to contest elections in a democracy. Neither Sunetra nor Sule has attacked each other directly.

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On Saturday, the Ajit Pawar-led NCP announced Sunetra as its candidate for Baramati. At the same time, the Sharad Pawar-led NCP announced Sule’s candidature for the seat. Both women have been campaigning since much before the Election Commission announced the Lok Sabha poll schedule. While the Sharad Pawar-led NCP had right from the start said that Sule would be renominated from Baramati, the Ajit Pawar-led NCP had kept silent. The deputy chief minister, however, had given enough hints that his wife would be the candidate in Baramati.

Sule said she wanted to thank the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi for renominating her once again. “Similarly, I want to thank voters who supported me three times in the past and elected me as their representative in the Lok Sabha. I want to again urge the voters to give me an opportunity to serve them,” she said.

Sule said the fight in Baramati was ideological for her. “I am not fighting against any individual. My fight is against BJP’s wrong policies. My politics is not individual but is of development and ideology,” she added.

Sule said the country was facing problems such as rising inflation and unemployment. “And the BJP government’s dictatorship is another big problem the country is facing, besides the rising corruption,” she said.

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Baramati will vote on May 7 in the third phase of the Lok Sabha elections.

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.   Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were  asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.     Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More


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