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Supriya Sule says not shocked by cousin Ajit Pawar’s plans to unseat her from Baramati

A day after Ajit Pawar said his NCP faction would field a candidate from Baramati, sitting MP Supriya Sule said she was not surprised by her cousin’s decision.

ajit pawar baramati supriya suleAsked why Ajit Pawar had decided to field a candidate against her, Sule said, “I cannot answer this... You can ask him about this. It is his decision... I am not surprised... I don’t think about the opponents, I think about my work.”

A day after the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) faction laid claim to the Baramati Lok Sabha seat, an unperturbed Supriya Sule, the three-time MP from the constituency, said she was prepared to take on anybody ready to challenge her supremacy in the traditional bastion of the Pawar family.

“This is a democracy and their Mahayuti was going to field a candidate against me,” Sule told The Indian Express on Saturday, a day after Ajit Pawar made the announcement at the Karjat session of the NCP.

Asked why Ajit Pawar had decided to field a candidate against her, Sule said, “I cannot answer this… You can ask him about this. It is his decision… I am not surprised… I don’t think about the opponents, I think about my work.”

Amid speculation that Ajit Pawar’s wife Sunetra is likely to be fielded from Baramati, Sule said she was ready for a dignified fight. “I do not know whether she will contest against me…I believe in democracy. There should be a dignified fight,” she said.

Saying that she was not surprised at her brother’s decision, Sule said even Sharad Pawar did not react when he heard about it. “What is there to react? We are, after all, living in a democracy. People are free to make decisions. I respect democracy. I genuinely mean it,” she said, denying there was panic in her camp.

Sule, who has often raised several issues related to Maharashtra in the Lok Sabha, said, “I respect democracy. I am in politics to serve the people and make policies in their interest and for their welfare… I am a 53-year-old mature politician…I have been a topper in Parliament,” she said.

Meanwhile, sources in the Ajit Pawar camp said they have drafted an elaborate plan to unseat Sule from Baramati. “A victory in Baramati will go a long way in proving the supremacy of Ajit Pawar, who has a chance of becoming the chief minister after the 2024 elections. Ajit Pawar’s only dream now is to become the chief minister. He is tired of being the deputy chief minister for 20 years now. Defeating his sister for his political gains will not matter to him,” an NCP leader said.

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Sule has won the Baramati seat for three consecutive times since 2009. Except for 2014 when Mahadev Jankar gave her a tough fight in the initial rounds, winning the Baramati Lok Sabha seat, which was vacated by her father in her favour, has been a cakewalk. Sharad Pawar, Ajit Pawar and Supriya Sule have never been defeated from Baramati yet.

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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