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This is an archive article published on November 17, 2014

In Pimpri, NCP open to tie-up but BJP says not interested

The BJP, however, says it is not interested in joining hands with the NCP as it was preparing to fight the party in the next civic elections.

In Pimpri-Chinchwad, the NCP does not need any support to prop up its regime at the PCMC as it enjoys a brute majority. However, NCP leaders say if there is a tie up at the state level, they will have no choice but to “tag” BJP along.

“We do not need BJP support in the PCMC as we have over 80 corporators and BJP has only three. But if there is an arrangement at the state level, we will take BJP with us in the PCMC,” said NCP leader Yogesh Behl, who is considered as the right hand man of Ajit Pawar.

The BJP, however, says it is not interested in joining hands with the NCP as it was preparing to fight the party in the next civic elections.

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BJP leader Eknath Pawar, who lost the Assembly election, said there are at least 40 corporators from the NCP who are ready to join the BJP. ‘

“But we do not want to encourage cross-overs,” he said.

Stressing that they will not have any truck with the NCP at the PCMC-level, Pawar said, “BJP has started preparations for the next civic elections, which are two years away. We are analysing the recent Assembly elections vis-a-vis the number of votes polled in each booth, the areas where we did well and the areas where we need to work hard. We have started the process of identifying candidates who will contest the elections on BJP ticket,” he said.

The NCP also denied that two MLAs, one from the BJP and the other an Independent, would be calling shots in the PCMC. “They are no more with us. Laxman Jagtap has joined the BJP and we have complained to the divisional commissioner regarding Mahesh Landge’s disqualification as a corporator under Anti-Defection Law,” said Behl.

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While Jagtap, who was with the NCP earlier, won the Assembly election on a BJP ticket, Mahesh Landge, who was elected as standing committee chairman a couple of months ago as NCP corporator, won the election as an Independent. Since both were closely associated with the NCP in all these years, they have good support among NCP corporators. In fact, several NCP corporators had openly campaigned for Landge in Bhosari and for Jagtap in Chinchwad.

Behl, however, underplayed the support enjoyed by the two MLAs in the NCP. “Only two corporators supported Landge in Bhosari and four-five were with Jagtap,” 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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