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Booked in murder case, Sunil Shelke is first-time NCP MLA, was in Ajit Pawar camp during crisis

During the 2019 elections, after being denied a party ticket by the BJP, Shelkhe approached the NCP and was picked to contest from Maval. Shelke went on to defeat three-time sitting BJP MLA Bala Bhegde by a convincing margin.

NCP's Maval MLA Sunil ShelkeNCP's Maval MLA Sunil Shelke (Express photo)
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Sunil Shelke, who has been booked in connection with the murder of businessman-activist Kishore Aware in Pune district, is a first-time MLA representing the NCP in Maharashtra’s Maval and, according to local leaders, was on the party’s radar for a Lok Sabha ticket in the next elections.

Shelke, his brother Sudhakar Shelke, and others have been booked by the police in connection with the murder of Aware, 48, at Talegaon Dabhade on Friday. Aware was shot dead in broad daylight by a group of about six people near the Talegaon Dabhade Municipal Council near Pune.

Shelke hails from a political family that was associated with the BJP for a long time. He has also served as a deputy council president of the Talegaon Municipal Council.

During the 2019 elections, after being denied a party ticket by the BJP, Shelkhe approached the NCP and was picked to contest from Maval. Shelke went on to defeat three-time sitting BJP MLA Bala Bhegde by a convincing margin.

Local party leaders say Shelke is known for his proximity to NCP leader Ajit Pawar. Following the assembly election results in Maharashtra, when Ajit Pawar joined hands with the BJP to briefly become deputy chief minister in a failed political move, Shelke was among the handful of MLAs who had backed him.

During the recent bypolls to the Chinchwad assembly constituency, party leaders said, Ajit Pawar had entrusted Shelke with the task of getting the party’s candidate elected. For instance, they said, Shelke was part of attempts to get Independent MLA Rahul Kalate to withdraw from the race. However, he failed in the bid and the presence of Kalate in the ring damaged the NCP candidate’s chances with the BJP winning the seat.

“Ajit Pawar has a lot of confidence in Shelke’s abilities to win elections,” NCP sources said. “Given his popularity in the Maval area, Shelke might have even become the party’s candidate for the Maval Lok Sabha seat in the next elections,” said an NCP leader from the area.

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When asked about the murder charge against Shelke, State NCP chief spokesperson Mahesh Tapase said, “We have come to know about it… We are looking into it.”

Curated For You

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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