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This is an archive article published on August 16, 2023

Congress says BJP wants Ajit Pawar to rope in Sharad Pawar; ‘no clue,’ says Supriya Sule

Maharashtra Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar said on Wednesday that PM Narendra Modi set a condition before Ajit Pawar that he should rope in Sharad Pawar if he wanted to become Maharashtra CM.

sharad pawarNCP chief Sharad Pawar at Parliament House complex during ongoing Monsoon session, in New Delhi, Thursday, Aug. 3, 2023. (PTI Photo/Shahbaz Khan) (PTI08_03_2023_000231A)
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Congress says BJP wants Ajit Pawar to rope in Sharad Pawar; ‘no clue,’ says Supriya Sule
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With Maharashtra Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar claiming on Wednesday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi set a condition before Ajit Pawar that he should rope in Sharad Pawar if he wanted to become the chief minister of Maharashtra, NCP leader Supriya Sule denied knowledge of any such development and said that she has not received any offer from the BJP. The Shiv Sena (UBT) also denied the news.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi has told Ajit Pawar that if he wants his dream of becoming the chief minister to come true, then he should get Sharad Pawar on their side… And that is why Ajit Pawar seems to be repeatedly meeting Sharad Pawar and making desperate pleas,” Wadettiwar told television reporters.

“I have no clue about all this…,” Sule told The Indian Express on Wednesday. “I am too busy with my constituency work. Pawar saheb has already replied to such claims. He has already spoken about this… He is independent, he is capable of defending himself,” Sule added.

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Asked about her reaction to the BJP efforts to rope in Sharad Pawar, Sule said, “My reaction is what my leader says…”.

Asked if she was happy the BJP was making such offers, Sule said, “I am ambivalent. I am indifferent because nobody has made any offers to me.”

Asked how she would react if BJP made an offer to her, Sule said, “I don’t react to hypothetical questions. I live in the real world.”

Sunil Tatkare from the Ajit Pawar-led NCP rubbished the claims as “ridiculous”. “I don’t want to talk about what the two leaders discussed as it is their family matter. When we joined hands with BJP, neither it (BJP) nor we had set any condition. We have joined hands for the sake of development of the country and the state,” he said.

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Senior Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan told The Indian Express, “A couple of days ago, I had said that Sharad Pawar was being offered a cabinet rank post by the BJP… This was based on some information that I got from my sources but I have not yet verified it.”

Sanjay Raut, chief spokesperson for Shiv Sena (UBT), said, “Who is Ajit Pawar to make an offer to Sharad Pawar? He is nobody. He won’t dare make any such offer.”

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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