The Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) chief Prakash Ambedkar Wednesday announced that his party would contest the Lok Sabha elections on its own. He also released the first list of nine candidates.
”We have decided to contest elections on our own. We took the decision at our party’s meeting last night,” the VBA chief said, while hinting at the possibility of forming a Third Front. Ambedkar’s announcement comes days after he severed ties with the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena. The VBA chief, at the time, had given the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance an ultimatum to finish seat-sharing talks till March 26.
Ambedkar who will be contesting from the Akola seat also announced that the VBA will support the Congress candidate in Nagpur seat.
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Ambedkar announced the decision but refused to take questions from reporters at the press conference.
The VBA chief said that till today, the OBC community had one or two MPs in the Lok Sabha. ”Therefore, this time, we have decided to field candidates from OBC Bhatke Vimukyta and ensure their victory,” he said.
He added that the VBA will field Muslim candidates in a bid stop the isolation process started by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). ”We will also be fielding Jain community and ensure their victory,” Ambedkar said.
He also said the party was in discussions with Maratha activists Manoj Jarange-Patil. ”But he has asked us to wait for some more days,” he said.
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Ambedkar accused the Congress of trying to use VBA to protect dynasts.
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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.
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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.
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