Pawar added that he had met Sangram at an event recently. (Express Photo)
A day after Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MLA Sangram Jagtap urged Hindus to make Diwali purchases exclusively from Hindu shopkeepers and traders, party chief and Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar termed the remark “completely wrong” and said that it was “not acceptable” to the party.
“The statement is completely wrong. We will send him a show-cause notice,” Pawar said in Pune on Saturday. “When the party’s policies and objectives have been decided, no MLA or MP should stray away from them. If anyone makes such statements, those are not acceptable to the party,” he added.
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Sangram, the MLA from Ahilyanagar, is the son of the late Arun Jagtap.
“Till Arunkaka Jagtap was alive, everything was fine in Ahilyanagar. But some people have given us an additional burden. Some people should remember that when the patronage of their father is no more available, they need to behave and speak responsibly. This is the land of Shiv-Shahu-Phule-Ambedkar. It believes in taking everyone along and ensuring there is progress,” Pawar said.
Pawar added that he had met Sangram at an event recently. “He told me that he will correct his ways. But that does not seem to be happening. His stand and his ideology are not acceptable to our party,” he added.
On Thursday, at a rally in Karmala taluka of Solapur district, Sangram said, “On the occasion of Diwali, every citizen should make purchases only from shops belonging to Hindus. Only Hindus should make a profit out of the sale. Currently, the attacks on Hindus are taking place from mosques.” He was speaking a day after AIMIM’s rally in Ahilyanagar, addressed by party chief Asaduddin Owaisi and state party chief Imtiaz Jaleel.
Maharashtra Congress spokesperson Gopal Tiwari said Sangram’s statement was highly condemnable. “It is aimed at disturbing the peace and communal harmony in the state of Maharashtra. The (Devendra) Fadnavis government should file a police complaint against him if it really believes that Maharashtra should stay peaceful,” Tiwari said.
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“It is also unfortunate that Ajit Pawar, who often swears that his party follows the ideology of Shahu-Phule Ambedkar, is now talking of sending a mere show-cause notice. The statement made by Sangram Jagtap is inflammatory and can lead to a dangerous situation. Ajit Pawar should immediately take action against Sangram Jagtap since the statement is in the public domain and his videos are going viral. Why does he need to send a show-cause notice? Is he trying to buy time? The MLA should be immediately sacked by NCP if the party truly believes in the ideology of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, who never discriminated between people from different religious backgrounds during his rule,” he 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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