Sharad Pawar’s NCP says a big fish will join party, Mahayuti will not cross 100 seats in Maharashtra elections
The NCP (SP) cited the Maharashtra electorate’s resentment towards the central BJP leadership as a key factor for the Mahayuti alliance's dwindling support.
The NCP (SP) has been on a high as a slew of leaders have expressed interest in joining the party ahead of the Assembly elections. (File)
The Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) on Wednesday claimed that a prominent leader from another political party was considering joining it and said it was determined to unseat the ruling Mahayuti alliance in Maharashtra in association with its allies, the Congress and Shiv Sena (UBT).
NCP state president Jayant Patil made the claim in Nashik but refused to reveal the leader or the party’s name. “It will be revealed at the appropriate time,” he said.
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One of the leaders being discussed is Eknath Khadse, who recently stated that he would not rejoin the BJP due to opposition from some party leaders. Two years ago, Khadse quit the BJP to join the united NCP led by Sharad Pawar owing to his differences with party leaders Devendra Fadnavis and Girish Mahajan.
The NCP (SP) has been on a high as a slew of leaders have expressed interest in joining the party ahead of the Assembly elections. The NCP (SP) claimed that there was massive discontent among the people regarding the way the Mahayuti had functioned so far.
”The alliance of the BJP, the Shiv Sena (Shinde faction) and the NCP led by Ajit Pawar will not secure more than 100 seats,” said NCP (SP) spokesperson Mahesh Tapase, citing the Maharashtra electorate’s resentment towards the central BJP leadership as a key factor for the alliance’s declining support.
“There is visible resentment against the central leadership of the BJP. Each time these leaders visit Maharashtra, the Mahayuti’s support base erodes further,” Tapase said.
Tapase specifically pointed to Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s recent visit to Nagpur. During his visit, he urged BJP workers to increase their vote share by 10 per cent to ensure the alliance’s victory.
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Responding to Shah’s remarks, Tapase claimed that the Mahayuti’s vote share would decrease by 20 per cent, arguing that voters in Maharashtra were increasingly disillusioned with the BJP’s “power-hungry” approach.
“The BJP has relied heavily on its central leaders to boost its electoral performance in Maharashtra, but the people of this state are no longer interested. They want accountability, development, and jobs, which the Mahayuti has failed to secure. Luring away MLAs of Uddhav Thackery and Sharad Pawar to make an unconstitutional alliance in Maharashtra has not gone well with people of the state,” Tapase added.
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.
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