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This is an archive article published on October 24, 2019

Baramati: Ajit Pawar wins by huge margin, his BJP rival loses deposit

In a seat the BJP had made a prestige issue, the NCP leader and former deputy chief minister won by 1,60,965 votes.

Maharashtra Assembly election results, Maharashtra Assembly election counting, Baramati seat, Ajit Pawar wins from Baramati, Ajit Pawar victory margin, Rohit Pawar wins Karjat-Jamkhed Ajit Pawar’s entire campaign was looked after by his wife, Sunetra, and sons Parth and Jay.

Despite BJP’s all-out bid to unseat Ajit Pawar from his family pocket borough of Baramati, the NCP leader and former deputy chief minister won by a record margin of 1,60,965 votes.

Pawar’s BJP rival Gopichand Padalkar lost his deposit, as did all other candidates.

It was the seventh successive win for Pawar, who had also won a Lok Sabha election from Bamarati 25 years ago.

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Pawar notched up 1,90,362 votes. Padalkar, the Dhangar community leader who was roped in by BJP before filing of nomination papers, proved no match, as he was bundled out for just 29,397 votes.

The BJP had made Baramati a prestige issue, with Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis openly declaring the party had “taken up the challenge of unseating Ajit Pawar”.

However, the NCP leader seemed confident throughout. He campaigned across the state for NCP, Congress and other alliance candidates, allowing himself little time for Baramati. In fact, he was seen in Baramati once when he came to file nomination papers, and then on the final day of campaigning.

On the last day of campaigning, as is the NCP tradition, NCP chief Sharad Pawar also addressed a rally for Ajit Pawar along with Supriya Sule.

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Ajit Pawar’s entire campaign was looked after by his wife, Sunetra, sons Parth and Jay, and other NCP leaders from Baramati city and district. They relied more on corner meetings, grievance meetings and door-to-door campaigning.

On the BJP’s side, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and state BJP chief Chandrakant Patil held rallies for Padalkar, who himself campaigned hard. Padalkar had been fielded by the BJP because of his spectacular performance as the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi Lok sabha candidate in Sangli, were he had secured over three lakh votes.

NCP Baramati district chief Sambhaji Holkar said they had no doubt about Ajit Pawar’s victory, but had been concerned about his margin. “Ajit Pawar’s victory was a foregone conclusion. We were looking for a record margin of victory, beyond 1.50 lakh. Ajitdada’s victory is commendable, given the tough fights across the state,” he said.

Pawar himself had been confident of improving his 2014 victory margin. “In 2014 elections, I had won by a margin of over 90,000 votes. This time, my margin will go beyond 1 lakh votes,” he had told The Indian Express during the campaigning.

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Sunetra Pawar, Ajit’s wife, said the verdict so far was double joy for them as nephew Rohit Pawar too had won from Karjat-Jamkhed seat. “We knew Baramati voters would repose faith in us…But the victory in Karjat-Jamkhed seat has brought us double joy,” she said.

Rohit Pawar said Ajit’s victory was due to the “development he had brought to Baramati. “We were eyeing a record victory margin from Baramati. And we are glad it has happened. This is because of the development brought in by Ajit Pawar to Baramati,” 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

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