After skipping ‘Varsha’ during Ganesh festival, Ajit Pawar denies rift with CM Eknath Shinde
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar also refused to comment on whether his wife Sunetra would contest from Baramati in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, with Deputy CM and NCP leader Ajit Pawar (Express Photo by Pavan Khengre)
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Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar on Monday denied that there was any rift between him and Chief Minister Eknath Shinde amidst speculation that their relations had soured as he had not paid a visit to ‘Varsha’, the CM’s official bungalow in Mumbai, during the recent Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations. He also kept mum on the possibility of his wife Sunetra contesting from Baramati in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
“I could not make it to the chief minister’s official bungalow during Ganesh aarti as I was busy visiting Ganesh mandals in Pimpri-Chinchwad and Pune city… I did not do it deliberately,” Pawar said while interacting with reporters in Baramati where he had come to launch a cleanliness drive on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti.
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“I must have visited 60 Ganesh mandals in Pimpri-Chinchwad and 15 in Pune city. I also visited Lalbaugcha (Raja) Ganpati and Siddhivinayak in Mumbai. And therefore I could not go there (CM’s bungalow)…Do not blow up the news unnecessarily,” he added.
Pawar also refused to comment when asked if his wife Sunetra would contest from the Baramati constituency in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. “I am hearing this from you…,” he told a reporter.
He denied that he had an argument with minister and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Chhagan Bhujbal during an official meeting last week where the latter had said that OBCs were not getting job opportunities and had argued that though there were government job vacancies, recruitment was not taking place.
“’There was no dispute with Bhujbal…When he gave out some figures, I asked him whether the information was authentic. Then I asked the chief secretary whether people from this category [OBC] were working with the state government. The chief secretary said the government does not have complete information about it. Then I told Bhujbal that we should collect the information first,” Ajit Pawar said.
Asked about the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board notice to Baramati Agro headed by MLA Rohit Pawar, who belongs to the Sharad Pawar faction of the NCP, Ajit Pawar said, “The notice is not sent to anyone deliberately. The agency sending notices is doing its job. Once we reply to the notice, the topic ends. No one should try to give a political angle to this… Even my unit had gotten such a notice. While running a unit, one should give a thought to the environment…,” he said.
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On the ‘Wagh Nakh’ (tiger claws) controversy – the weapon is set to be brought to the state from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and questions have been raised about whether or not it was actually used by Chhatrapati Shivaji – Ajit Pawar said he will place the matter before the next cabinet meeting. “’Historians have different views about the Wagh Nakh…Some officials from the government are going to London to bring it back. It will remain in Maharashtra for the next three years…I am going to place this issue before the cabinet meeting for discussion,” he said.
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
