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This is an archive article published on February 24, 2017

PCMC Elections 2017: BJP crosses ‘Laxman’ rekha, Ajit Pawar’s team caves in sans a fight

The BJP captured power by pocketing 78 seats.

TILL Tuesday, the day of voting, it seemed like NCP, which is led by Ajit Pawar in PCMC, will emerge as the largest party in Pimpri-Chinchwad resting on the shoulders of old guards, sitting and former corporators, whom it had thrown in the ring. The collective belief, shared openly by most NCP leaders, Sena leaders and even by a clutch of BJP leaders, ultimately went for a toss as the BJP sprinted to glory in a spectacular victory which seemed to have taken, one and all in Pimpri-Chinchwad, by surprise.

The BJP captured power by pocketing 78 seats. The NCP, which had won with a brute majority of 83 seats in 2012, could not have imagined that its fate would change and would finish with abysmal figure of 37 seats.

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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