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This is an archive article published on July 12, 2024

As Congress MLAs cross-vote, Mahayuti makes the cut; Pune’s Tilekar and Gorkhe win

Tilekar is a former BJP MLA from Hadapsar. He was elected in 2014. However, he lost the 2019 elections

Maharashtra Legislative Assembly MLC pollsAnother BJP candidate to emerge victorious was Dr Prinay Phuke who secured 26. Panjaka Munde has made it to the State Legislature after five years. (Express photo)

AS WIDELy anticipated, all nine Mahayuti candidates today raced to victory in the first round of counting of votes for Maharashtra State Legislative Council polls. At the same time, speculations of Congress MLAs cross-voting turned out to be true as of the three candidates two won, which included Milind Narvekar of Sena (UBT).

”We will check who cross-voted and will take action against them,” said Congress spokesperson, as it emerged that at least five Congress MLAs had voted in favour of Mahayuti candidates.

NCP (Ajit Pawar) seemed to be the biggest beneficiary as two of their candidates received an additional five votes.

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”We had 40 MLAs of our own, besides the support from two independent candidates. However, we received an additional five votes. I want to thank all those who gave us additional votes,” said Dy CM Ajit Pawar.

As per sources, Milind Narvekar’s victory was apparently possible because of his proximity to BJP leaders. Narvekar was fielded by Sena (UBT) on the last day of filing nominations. Jayant Patil of Peasants and Workers Party, backed by NCP (SP), was the lone candidate who lost.

Yogesh Tilekar of Pune was the first one to secure 23 mandatory votes. Tilekar is a former BJP MLA from Hadapsar. He was elected in 2014, but lost 2019 elections, wherein NCP’s Chetan Tupe won.

BJP candidate Amit Gorkhe from Pimpri-Chinchwad also won. Gorkhe, who is close to Dy CM Devendra Fadnavis, is a Matang community leader.

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Congress candidate Pradnya Satav, widow of Congress leader Rajiv Satav, was re-elected today.

Firebrand BJP leader Pankaja Munde, who recently lost the Beed Lok Sabha seat, also won. Another BJP candidate to emerge victorious was Dr Prinay Phuke who secured 26. Panjaka Munde has made it to the State Legislature after five years.

Two candidates from NCP (Ajit group) — Shivajirao Garje and Rajesh Vitekar — both won decisively. “I am very happy.

These wins are bigger than my Lok Sabha victory. There are invisible powers who carry on supporting us. This was a trailer to the State Assembly elections. Our MLAs have shown our opponents their place. I am proud of my MLAs,” said a jubilant Sunil Tatkare, State president of NCP. Sena’s Bhawana Gawli and Krupal Tumane also won. ”Congress must be feeling the agony,” CM Eknath Shinde said in the State Assembly, while taking a jibe at the Congress.

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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