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Ahead of bypolls, Devendra Fadnavis meets deceased MLA’s family; says BJP will make efforts for unopposed election

Devendra Fadnavis, District Guardian Minister Chandrakant Patil and other local leaders met Tilak's husband Shailesh Tilak in a surprise visit to their residence at Kesriwada.

Devendra Fadnavis (Source: Twitter/@Dev_Fadnavis)
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Even as it is getting ready to announce candidates for the Chinchwad and Kasba bypolls, the Maharashtra unit of the BJP has not given up its efforts to ensure an unopposed election in both the seats. The polling for both the seats are slated to take place on February 26 and the last date for filing nominations is February 7.

“We will soon announce the names of our candidates for both the seats. However, our efforts to get our candidates elected unopposed will continue. We had earlier written to the Opposition parties. We will once again appeal to them to step forward to make the elections unopposed as per Maharashtra’s political tradition,” Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said after meeting deceased MLA Mukta Tilak’s family late last evening in Pune city.

Fadnavis, District Guardian Minister Chandrakant Patil and other local leaders met Tilak’s husband Shailesh Tilak in a surprise visit to their residence at Kesriwada. Fadnavis and Patil held a close-door meeting with Shailesh Tilak and son Kunal Tilak but refused to reveal what transpired between them.

A BJP leader close to Fadnavis and Patil said, “The family was told that they should not mind if the ticket is not given to them and that they should continue to work for the party like in the past. They were told that the final decision will be taken by the party’s parliamentary board.” The BJP has appointed Kunal Tilak as the state spokesperson of the party, effectively ruling him out of the race, the BJP leader added.

When contacted, Shailesh Tilak said, “The Deputy Chief Minister and the District Guardian Minister met us at our residence. Although the Deputy CM told us that he could not meet the family after the death of my wife, he had come for the funeral.”

When asked whether Fadnavis spoke about giving a ticket to the family, Shailesh Tilak said, “The issue was discussed. The Deputy CM said the final decision will be taken by their party’s parliamentary board.”

Asked whether the family has staked claim, Shailesh Tilak said, “Yes, we have already staked claim for the party ticket. I had sought an audience with Fadnavis and he had then promised to meet me.”

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He, however, said both Fadnavis and Patil gave no indications as to whether he or his son will be nominated by the party. “My son has been appointed party’s spokesperson. I don’t know if that rules him out of the race for the party nominations,” he said.

“After the meeting between Fadnavis and the Tilak family, it is now a race between Rasane and Ghate,” said a top BJP leader. If the Tilak family is seemingly out of the race, then the two strong contenders for the Kasba seat are former corporators Hemant Rasane and Dheeraj Ghate. Rasane has thrice served as the PMC standing committee chairman while Ghate was elected as corporator in the 2017 election. Both are from the Kasba Peth constituency. The third aspirant is Ganesh Bidkar.

Meanwhile, for the Chinchwad seat, the “ultimatum” given by the party to the Jagtap family has ended. “The party had given an ultimatum till Friday afternoon to decide who will contest the seat. Laxman Jagtap’s brother Shankar Jagtap and wife Ashwini Jagtap are in the race. Both have filed nomination forms from the election office. Both are eyeing the seat. The family was told to suggest one name,” said a BJP leader from Pimpri-Chinchwad. The family has apparently left it to the party to decide. Fadnavis had over a week back met the Jagtap family at their residence and held a closed door meeting.

The feeling in the BJP is that if Ashwini Jagtap contests, the Nationalist Congress Party might not field its candidate given the close relationship that NCP leader Ajit Pawar shared with the Jagtap family. “The BJP is looking at Ashwini Jagtap so that there is no contest,” said a leader. Shankar Jagtap’s supporters have already launched a campaign for him on social media.

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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