Congress interim chief Sonia Gandhi and NCP chief Sharad Pawar.
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Senior Congress leaders K C Venugopal and Mallikarjun Kharge, who were supposed to come to
Mumbai on Tuesday to discuss the possibility of a tie-up with the Shiv Sena for government formation in Maharashtra have deferred their visit. Instead, state Congress leaders will hold discussions with the NCP during a meeting today at around 4 pm in Mumbai.
Senior Congress leader Manikrao Thakre said the visit of top Congress leaders to Mumbai has been cancelled on the request of NCP chief Sharad Pawar. “Pawarsaheb has said the meeting with top leaders can be held in two days time. Before that, he has said leaders of both the parties in Maharashtra will discuss the future course of action today,” he said.
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Thakre said they might also hold discussion with the Shiv Sena leaders. “If required we will hold discussion with the Shiv Sena,” he said. Thakre said there are “certain things” which will be clarified today.
The Congress virtually dashed Shiv Sena’s hopes of forming a government under its leadership in Maharashtra as the party looked reluctant to enter into an alliance with the latter. “Congress was not comfortable with Sena’s stand on Ram temple construction and Uniform Civil Code,” said a Sena functionary.
Sources said both Sonia and former chief Rahul Gandhi were not in favour of backing a Sena-led government. The Congress high command, however, did not rule out any possibility publicly and kept the Sena waiting.
Meanwhile, Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut who is admitted to Lilavati Hospital following complaints of chest pain, in a tweet said, “Koshish karne walo ki haar nahi hoti ..Hum honge kaamyaab.”
In another development, Shiv Sena leaders Uddhav Thackeray and Aditya Thackeray will hold discussions with Sena MLAs and brief them about development.
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
