Pawar camp slams Modi ‘falsehoods’

The BJP has fielded Balasaheb Gawde from Baramati.

A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a blistering attack on NCP chief Sharad Pawar and party leader Ajit Pawar, the Pawar family put up a united front and rubbished the charges, saying “falsehoods” being spread by the PM would get a befitting reply from from voters in Baramati.

The family also denied charges of land grabbing, saying it had not taken over “even an inch of land” from farmers.

“Whatever the PM alleged were falsehoods, the people of Baramati will give a befitting reply,” Supriya Sule, Baramati MP and Sharad Pawar’s daughter, said. “The entire country knows the kind of development our family brought in Baramati. That was perhaps the reason he could not speak a word about development (during his rally in Baramati).”

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Sule said Modi’s language did suit his image or the office he holds. “He spoke about freeing people from gulam-giri… What gulam-giri is he talking about? Had we done anything wrong, people of Baramati would have beaten us up,” Sule said. “His falsehoods have hurt voters in Baramati. I am sure they would come out in big numbers to vote for Ajit dada,” she said.

Kiran Gujar, the family spokesperson and Sharad Pawar’s pointsman in Baramati, rubbished the land-grabbing allegations. “This is nonsense. Pawar saheb had inherited only three-and-a-half acres land from his father, which today stands at four acre. Ajit dada and his wife together hold only 18 acres of land at Katewadi. And Supriya has one-and-a-half acres…,” Gujar said.

Gujar said the farmers’ land was not take away by Pawars, but was taken over by the state government to set up Baramati MIDC in 1988. “Around 2,500 acre of land was taken over by the government to set up Baramati industrial area. All the farmers were compensated,” he said, adding that the project had changed the face of Baramati for the better.

Ajit Pawar’s wife Sunetra said the Modi rally would have no bearing on their campaigning schedule. “As per tradition, Ajit and Sharad address a rally only on the last day of campaigning. This time would be no different.”

The BJP has fielded Balasaheb Gawde from Baramati.

Manoj Dattatrye More

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