The Solapur police provided Thite with security. (Express Photo)
A DAY after she filed her nomination papers for presidentship of the Angar Nagar Parishad in Solapur district amid tight police security, the nomination form of NCP candidate Ujwala Thite was on Tuesday rejected by the returning officer on the ground that it did not contain the signature of the proposer. While the Ajit Pawar-led NCP alleged foulplay, State Election Commissioner Dinesh Waghmare said they will seek a report from District Collector Kumar Ashirwad.
“My nomination form was rejected today. I was told by election officials that it was rejected because there was no signature of the proposer. However, signature of my son was very much there on the nomination form,” Ujwala told The Indian Express. Her form was declared invalid during scrutiny of papers.
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However, her son — the proposer — said he had signed the form in front of the returning officer. “When my mother was submitting the nomination form, the election officials sought to know who was the proposer. When I stepped forward, I was asked to sign on the form. While I have taken all the videos of my mother submitting the form, the election office must be having the video of me signing the form,” said Jaywant Thite, son Ujwala.
When contacted, District Collector Kumar Ashirwad said, “The nomination form was rejected on valid grounds. There was a major mistake on the form. As per the Supreme Court guidelines, there are two types of mistakes on any nomination form. One is a minor mistake and another is of substantial mistake. If the proposer’s sign is not there on the nomination form, it is a mistake of substantial nature.”
An official said Thite’s son’s claim that he had signed the form was a lie. “He is lying… You can check the zerox copy of the nomination form put up on the tehsildar’s notice board. You will know the truth,” the official said.
The Thite family said authorities can check the video recording when the nomination form was submitted. “It will become clear whether I had signed or not,” said Jaywant.
“Our job was to ensure her nomination form was submitted. Together, we and the police ensured she submitted her nomination form… We had deployed 150-200 police personnel,” an official said.
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Criticising the election officials, NCP district unit president Umesh Patil alleged that there was some foulplay. “When such heavy police security was provided for the candidate, would we have been careless in filling up the nomination form? We had taken help of lawyers and experts to fill up the form. Our strong suspicion is that the signature was erased using some chemical. We urge the Election Commission to probe this matter thoroughly. In the meanwhile, we will appeal to the designated authority.”
When contacted, Waghmare said they will seek a report from the district collector. “We will ask the district collector to submit a report. Meanwhile, the candidate can go in for an appeal over rejection of her nomination form.”
On Monday, Ujwala had filed her nomination form amid heavy police security. She had earlier thrice tried to fill up her form but was not allowed to do so allegedly by some people close to a BJP leader. She had alleged threat to her life.
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
