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Ambedkar in the ring as Shinde muddles Congress plans in Solapur

Veteran politician Sushil Kumar Shinde has been spending hours meeting the people of the constituency, while sticking to the official line that “the party will decide” on his candidature.

Sushil Kumar Shinde (File Photo)

As NCP supremo Sharad Pawar again announced on Monday that he won’t be contesting the Lok Sabha elections, friend and fellow veteran politician Sushil Kumar Shinde has re-entered the fray.

While the 77-year-old Congress leader and former Union home minister refused to spell out the reasons for contesting again, daughter and MLA Praniti Shinde said “it’s for the sake of the people of Solapur”. Shinde has been spending hours meeting the people of the constituency, while sticking to the official line that “the party will decide” on his candidature.

This will complicate matters for the Congress, which is believed to have finalised former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan’s name for the Solapur Lok Sabha seat. Shinde has won from here thrice and announced he was quitting politics after losing from Solapur in 2014 by more than 1 lakh votes. Many in Solapur believe Shinde is back in the ring to avenge that humiliation.

The Congress leader has a fighting chance as the BJP’s sitting MP, Sharad Bansode, is seen to be an absentee representative even as residents of Solapur city have been grappling with problems such as severe water shortage. Praniti said her father with his experience would help the people of Solapur.

Denying that he was not available for people of his constituency, Bansode said he was mostly stationed in Mumbai as he was a practising advocate. “I am in Solapur for eight days a month,” he said.

He admitted, however, that one reason for Solapur’s problems was infighting within the BJP, between camps led by two ministers, as a result of which its civic problems were not being addressed. “I don’t want to form a third camp and damage the party’s image in the public eye,” he told The Indian Express.

On Shinde’s return to the political field, Bansode said, “He has announced his retirement thrice in the past.” Earlier too Shinde had said that 2014 would be his last election.

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According to sources, the BJP might replace Bansode with minister Subhash Deshmukh in the seat, to bolster its chances. The BJP is keen to retain the seat as Prime Minister Narendra Modi had last month inaugurated a spate of projects in the city.

What has also heated the contest for Solapur is the announcement by Prakash Ambedkar, who heads the Bahujan Vanchit Agadhi, on Monday that he will be standing from the seat.

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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