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This is an archive article published on September 27, 2018

Eye on 2019 elections, Congress keen to join hands with Prakash Ambedkar’s party

But AIMIM says ‘want Ambedkar to lead alliance of Bahujan parties’.

Eye on 2019 elections, Congress keen to join hands with Prakash Ambedkar’s party Bharip Bahujan Mahasangh leader Prakash Ambedkar. (File)

THE STATE unit of the Congress has said it is keen to take on board the Prakash Ambedkar-led Bharip Bahujan Mahasangh (BBM) for the assembly and parliamentary elections. “Discussions are underway to strike an electoral alliance with Prakash Ambedkar’s party. So far, nothing has been finalised,” State Congress chief Ashok Chavan said on Wednesday.

Chavan said the All India Congress Committee will take a final decision regarding the alliance. “We want to take the BBM along for the next year’s election. I am sure a decision in this regard will be made soon,” he said.

On Tuesday, Ambedkar had met AIMIM leader Imitiaz Jaleel to discuss a possible alliance. However, he said a decision about joining hands with the AIMIM will be taken once the Congress makes its response clear. “We have been in discussions with Congress leaders regarding the alliance, but so far we have not received any response from them,” he said.

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The AIMIM, however, said it wanted Ambedkar to lead an alliance of smaller parties. “We want Prakash Ambedkar to lead an alliance of ‘bahujan’ parties, be it Dalits or Muslims,” said Jaleel.

On October 2, the BBM and MIM are holding a rally in Aurangabad, where a decision regarding the “alliance” will be taken, he said. “We are confident that Ambedkar will lead our alliance and not join hands with the Congress. This is because Ambedkar has demanded 12 Lok Sabha seats from the Congress for next year’s election, but the Congress is not ready to part with the seats. The BBM has sought those seats where the Congress had been losing,” said Jaleel.

When queried if the AIMIM was ready to join the Congress-led alliance, Jaleel said a decision regarding this will be disclosed during the rally on October 2.

However, on Wednesday, Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant tweeted that the AIMIM was the ‘B-team’ of the BJP. “Both AIMIM and BJP have the same communal agenda,” he said.

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Sawant said the Congress has already held two rounds of discussions with the BBM and was in the process of finalising an alliance. Another Congress leader said the speculations about BBM joining hands with AIMIM was surprising as “AIMIM has the same agenda as the BJP. They are both busy polarising the masses.”

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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