Harshvardhan Patil meets Sharad Pawar, but Fadnavis confident he won’t quit BJP
Speculations have been rife that Harshvardhan Patil, a former MLA from Indapur Assembly seat, would switch sides, especially after NCP leader and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar said those who won the seat last time will get to retain the seat.
BJP leader Harshvardhan Patil met NCP (SP) national chief Sharad Pawar in Pune. (FB)
EVEN as BJP leader Harshvardhan Patil met NCP (SP) national chief Sharad Pawar in Pune on Tuesday, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said he was confident the former minister will not leave the party.
“Be it Harshvardhan Patil or other party leaders, they will all remain with us,” Fadnavis told reporters in Mumbai minutes after Pawar and Patil held a closed door meeting in Pune.
You’ve Read Your Free Stories For Now
Sign up and keep reading more stories that matter to you.
Fadnavis said, “Don’t focus on who is meeting whom. BJP is a strong party. There is massive incoming taking place in BJP. Last week, several leaders joined BJP and in future too, the incoming in the party will continue. During elections, some switch sides, it will continue to happen.”
Speculations have been rife that Harshvardhan Patil, a former MLA from Indapur Assembly seat, would switch sides, especially after NCP leader and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar said those who won the seat last time will get to retain the seat.
“I am waiting for our leader Devendra Fadnavis to clarify the situation vis-a-vis Indapur Assembly seat,” Harshvardhan Patil told a Marathi news channel on Monday.
Harshvardhan Patil, who has been elected as MLA four times from Indapur seat, is aspiring to contest from Indapur again. However, the seat is represented by BJP’s alliance partner, NCP. NCP’s Dattatray Bharne has in the last two elections defeated Harshvardhan Patil. NCP is likely to field Bharne again this time and Ajit Pawar has already hinted at that possibility.
Patil, president of the National Federation of Cooperative Sugar Factories (NFCSF) Ltd and also council member of the VSI, denied that he discussed politics with Pawar. ”Other than official discussion, no other discussion took place,” he said.
Story continues below this ad
Earlier this month, Patil had said that party workers want him to once again contest from Indapur seat. ”Party workers have been demanding that I re-contest, I am waiting for Fadnavis to clarify who gets to contest the seat,” Patil said, adding that he had helped Sunetra Pawar during the Lok Sabha elections and expects return favour.
Until 2019, Harshvardhan Patil, who has served as minister under six chief ministers, was in the Congress. On the eve of 2019 elections, he had shifted to BJP and contested the Indapur seat where he was defeated by Bharne.
Asked about state BJP chief Chandrashekhar Bawankule’s statement that leaders wanting to leave the party are free to do so, Patil said, “I don’t know in what context he has made that statement…I have not taken any decision to leave the party. Neither I have met anyone nor anyone has approached me.”
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
