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Harshvardhan Patil joins Sharad Pawar’s NCP, says his ‘invisible hand’ helped Supriya Sule win from Baramati

Sharad Pawar throws his weight behind Harshvardhan Patil to contest as the MVA candidate from the Indapur constituency in the Maharashtra Assembly elections.

Harshvardhan Patil joins NCP SP After joining the party, Patil revealed that he had an ''invisible hand'' in helping Sule win the Baramati Lok Sabha seat. (Photo: X)

Days after he quit the BJP, former Maharashtra minister Harshvardhan Patil on Monday joined the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchanra Pawar) in the presence of president Sharad Pawar and other leaders like Supriya Sule and Jayant Patil. After joining the party, Patil revealed that he had an ”invisible hand” in helping Sule win the Baramati Lok Sabha seat.

Pawar made it clear that Patil will be the party’s candidate from the Indapur seat in the upcoming Maharashtra Assembly elections. ”I urge the people to send Harshvardhan Patil to the Vidhan Sabha,” Pawar said at the event organised to welcome Patil into the party in Indapur.

Pawar said Patil told him that he should be assigned any work. ”We don’t need him if he was to be assigned any work. If it is difficult, if it is related to the people, and if it can change people’s lives, then we need Harshvardhan for such work. If people want him to do such difficult work, they should send him to Maharashtra Legislative Assembly,” Pawar said.

Pawar said he has so far contested 14 elections. ”Of the 14 times, the seven times Indapur taluka voted in my favour. Therefore, I don’t need anything for myself. I want to change Maharashtra. He (Patil) wants to change their lives. The NCP (SP) is doing that job. If we want to bring change in people’s lives, then we need experienced and hard-working people like Harshvardhan Patil in the state assembly,” he said.

In his address, Patil said, ”I am proud of Supriya Sule, who has been elected four times as the MP. Of these four times, we supported her thrice, and the fourth time, we indirectly helped her. We had an invisible hand in her Lok Sabha victory.”

Patil quit the BJP because he was eyeing the Indapur seat, from where he had lost twice, in 2014 and 2019. As per the arrangement among alliance partners in Mahayuti, the seat will be contested by the NCP led by Ajit Pawar. It has already decided to field Dattatray Bharne, who has won from Indapur twice and defeated Patil on both occasions.

My Express

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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