Pawar vs Pawar in Baramati: Ajit’s wife to take on three-time MP Supriya Sule
Sharad Pawar first won from Baramati in 1984. In 1991, Ajit Pawar, his nephew and protégé, won back the constituency and later vacated it to accommodate his uncle. Since 1996, Baramati has been represented first by Sharad Pawar and then Supriya.
It is going to be a Pawar versus Pawar battle in western Maharashtra’s Baramati Lok Sabha constituency, the fortress of former chief minister and NCP (SP) president Sharad Pawar.
The NCP led by Deputy CM Ajit Pawar on Saturday announced the name of his wife Sunetra Pawar as its candidate from Baramati, pitting her against her sister-in-law and Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule, who has won the seat thrice since 2009. Maharashtra NCP president Sunil Tatkare made the announcement at a press conference in Mumbai.
Supriya’s name was also announced by the NCP (SP) on Saturday – a confirmation of Sharad Pawar’s announcement at a rally in Baramati last week that she would be the party candidate from the Lok Sabha seat.
You have exhausted your monthly limit of free stories.
Read more stories for free with an Express account.
Speaking to reporters in the evening, Sunetra said, “’This is a golden moment for me…This is my biggest honour… Wherever I am going, I am getting overwhelming response. It looks like the voters will stand behind Ajitdada. It is the people who decided that I should be their candidate. They have taken the election into their own hands.”
This is the first time Sunetra is contesting an election.
Sharad Pawar first won from Baramati in 1984. In 1991, Ajit Pawar, his nephew and protégé, won back the constituency and later vacated it to accommodate his uncle. Since 1996, Baramati has been represented first by Sharad Pawar and then Supriya.
Although Sharad Pawar had already announced Supriya’s name for the seat this time as well, Ajit Pawar remained evasive in recent weeks when asked whether Sunetra would contest from Baramati. “You will soon come to know,” he would say. However, in rallies in Baramati, without taking the name of Sunetra, he would urge people to vote for the “candidate of his choice”. He also warned voters that if they didn’t, the development of Baramati would suffer.
Speaking to Marathi television channel ABP Majha after her name was announced, Sunetra thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and other alliance leaders for nominating her.
Supriya’s name figured in the NCP (SP)’s first list of five candidates. Apart from renominating her and Marathi actor-politician Amol Kolhe from Shirur – also a sitting MP – the party named Nilesh Lanke from Ahmednagar, Amar Kale from Wardha and Bhaskarrao Bhagre from Dindori. “This is our first list of candidates. We will soon declare the second list of candidates,” state NCP (SP) president Jayant Patil said.
Story continues below this ad
Kolhe will contest against rival NCP candidate Shivajirao Adhalrao-Patil in Shirur – an NCP versus NCP battle like in Baramati. Lanke is pitted against BJP’s Sujay Vikhe-Patil in Ahmednagar. Kale is pitted against BJP’s Ramdas Tadas in Wardha. Bhaskarrao Bhagre is likely to contest against sitting MP Dr Bharati Pawar.
Adhalrao-Patil’s name was announced earlier this week at a rally in Manchar by Ajit Pawar. He was in the Shiv Sena led by Shinde. During seat-sharing discussions in the ruling Mahayuti alliance, the seat went to Ajit Pawar’s NCP, which, however, struggled to find a strong candidate to take on Kolhe, a popular Marathi actor. Later, Adhalrao-Patil joined Ajit Pawar’s party.
In Maval, it will be a battle between Shinde’s Sena and Sena (UBT) led by Uddhav Thackeray. While Shinde’s party has fielded two-time MP Shrirang Barne, Sena (UBT) has fielded Sanjog Wahgere.
The Pune Lok Sabha seat is the only one where the BJP and Congress will battle it out for supremacy. The Pune seat traditionally has been a Congress stronghold. However, in the last two elections, the BJP has won the seat.
Story continues below this ad
This time, the BJP has fielded Murlidhar Mohol, a former Pune city mayor, while the Congress has fielded Kasba Peth MLA Ravindra Dhangerkar.
Apart from Sunetra’s candidature from Baramati, the Ajit Pawar-led NCP also announced to give the Parbhani Lok Sabha seat from its quota to Rashtriya Samaj Party (RSP)’s Mahadev Jankar as the Mahayuti candidate.
Tatkare said he is a prominent leader of the Dhangar Samaj movement and fought for reservation in Maharashtra. Jankar would be contesting against Sena (UBT)’s Sanjay Jadhav, who is the sitting MP from Parbhani.
Incidentally, Jankar is considered as a political opponent of the Sharad Pawar family and had earlier contested against Supriya in Baramati.
He was the Animal Husbandry Minister in the Devendra Fadnavis government during 2014-19 and was considered a close aide of BJP leader late Gopinath Munde.
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
