Mahayuti breathes easy in Pimpri and Chinchwad as rebels return home

Pimpri-Chinchwad has three assembly constituencies of Pimpri, Chinchwad and Bhosari, all of which are with the Mahayuti.

Nana Kate, who till Sunday had been repeatedly saying he would not withdraw from the fray, quietly dropped out. (Facebook/ Nana Kate)

On the last day to withdraw nominations, NCP rebel candidate Nana Kate withdrew his candidature in Chinchwad assembly seat while in Pimpri seat, as many as 21 independents withdrew their nomination candidates.

Pimpri-Chinchwad has three assembly constituencies of Pimpri, Chinchwad and Bhosari, all of which are with the Mahayuti. The Chinchwad and Bhosari seats have been represented by BJP MLAs, while Pimpri had been represented by the Ajit Pawar-led NCP.

Kate, who till Sunday had been repeatedly saying he would not withdraw from the fray, quietly dropped out. He wasted no time revealing that a phone call from his leader Ajit Pawar made him withdraw from the race. “I got a call from our leader Ajit Pawar urging me to withdraw from the race. He said every seat is important for Mahayuti and that we should all work unitedly to bring our government back to power,” Kate said.

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Kate then met Shankar Jagtap, the BJP candidate contesting his first election, and expressed his support for him.

Another NCP rebel candidate Bhausaheb Bhoir from Chinchwad seat was also approached by Ajit Pawar, but he has refused to withdraw from the fray. “Ajitdada urged me to withdraw from the fray in the larger interest of Mahayuti but I told him that I was firm on contesting,” Bhoir said.

Bhoir was earlier in the Congress. He had contested the Chinchwad assembly seat in 2009 but had finished as runner up with 25,000 votes.

“The contours of the Chinchwad seat have changed. There are over two voters from Chinchwad to Ravet area. I have been in touch with the voters,” he said.
Bhoir claimed that the fight in Chinchwad will be between him and Shankar Jagtap.

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The third candidate in the Chinchwad seat is Rahul Kalate, who has been fielded by the NCP (SP). Kalate had contested two past assembly elections. In the 2019 assembly elections, he had put up a tough fight against Laxman Jagtap but had lost. In both the elections, he was unsuccessful.

“In both of the past elections, I was pitted against a popular leader like Laxman Jagtap. Now the challenge is less. I am confident of winning the seat,” he said.
Jagtap passed away last year. His wife Ashwini Jagtap had subsequently won the seat two months later. She was replaced by Shankar Jagtap, her brother-in-law, by the BJP.

Of the three assembly seats in Pimpri-Chinchwad, Chinchwad seat has the highest voter count of nearly 6.5 lakh.

In the Pimpri reserved seat, as many as 21 independents withdrew their nominations. The seat is now set to witness a direct fight between sitting NCP MLA Anna Bansode and former corporator Sulakshna Shilwant.

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On the last day of filing nominations, former corporators Chandrakanta Sonkamble, Jeetendra Nanaware and Gautam Chabukswar withdrew from the race.

Bansode has twice ben elected from the Pimpri reserved seat. There was strong opposition to his candidature from former NCP corporators. However, his loyality to Ajit Pawar worked as despite stiff opposition, he was renominated by the party.

The Sharad Pawar led NCP has fielded Sulakshna Shilwant, who is considered a lightweight candidate as her popularity had so far been confined to Sant Tukaram-Kasarwadi area. However, NCP (SP) spokesperson Mahesh Tapase said, “Once our national chief Sharad Pawar holds a rally in Pimpri, the whole scenario will change. Besides, our top leaders will also be holding rallies for our candidate.”

In Bhosari, there will be a direct fight between sitting BJP MLA Mahesh Landge and Ajit Gavhane who has been fielded by the NCP (SP). Ravi Landge, the Shiv Sena (UBT) rebel candidate, has withdrawn from the race. Landge has stolen the limelight in campaigning as he has gone to town highlighting his development works through social media and his corner meetings.

Manoj Dattatrye More

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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