‘Those who attempted to storm Baramati in the past lost their deposits,’ says NCP leader
@the_news_21
Mumbai: As the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) makes every strenuous effort ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election to storm the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar’s bastion of Baramati, Leader of Opposition in Legislative Assembly Ajit Pawar on Thursday, in a sarcastic jibe aimed at the BJP, said that those who attempted to storm Baramati generally lost their election deposits.
Addressing NCP workers in Pune, the former deputy chief minister in the erstwhile ‘Maha Vikas Aghadi’ (MVA) government, took pot-shots at the central and state BJP leaderships for leaving aside vital farmer issues and focusing their attention and resources instead in trying to storm their Baramati bastion in rural Pune.
Ajit Pawar remarked, “Will anything come out of leaving everything aside and trying to storm Baramati? In the last election (2019 Maharashtra Assembly election), they (BJP) propped up someone against me…while I take all my opponents seriously, the BJP candidate lost by 1.68 lakh votes while he and all other contestants lost their deposits.” Pawar, has represented the Baramati Assembly constituency as an MLA for the last nearly 30 years now.
In the 2019 Assembly election, Ajit Pawar had defeated the BJP’s Gopichand Padalkar by a record margin, which led to the latter losing his election deposit.
He said that because of the affection showered on him and other members of the Pawar clan by the people of Baramati, he felt enthused to work tirelessly for their welfare.
After toppling the MVA government (of the NCP, Shiv Sena and the Congress) in Maharashtra, the BJP is going all-out to win key constituencies in the 2024 general election with the hitherto impregnable Baramati fortress being high on their priority list.
Towards this end, Union Finance Minister and senior BJP leader Nirmala Sitharaman, who will be on a tour of the constituency between September 22-24, has been tasked with spearheading her party’s campaign to uproot the Pawar clan from their political borough.
Commenting upon Nirmala Sitharaman’s visit, Ajit Pawar remarked, “Let anyone come. We will welcome them. It is Maharashtra’s political culture to welcome all…just like NCP has the right to expand, so has the BJP.”
Criticizing the new Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis government, Ajit Pawar said that several public welfare works on the ground had taken a backseat as Guardian Ministers of respective districts have not been appointed so far even after more than a month-and-a-half of the new government taking power.
The senior NCP leader further remarked, “It has been more than 45 days, yet no Guardian Minister has been appointed for respective districts. But the CM (Eknath Shinde) and Deputy CM (Devendra Fadnavis) have other things to do. If I talk too much against them, they get upset.”
Stating that the political situation in the country today was perilous, Ajit Pawar said that the country’s unity was being threatened by the policies of the Centre. He lashed out at the BJP’s policy of aggressively ‘breaking’ other parties and ruthlessly poaching leaders from them.
Pawar in the end quipped, “Earlier we thought that the Shiv Sena split of its own accord. But now we know that someone had been trying to effect a split within the party for a long time (referring to the BJP) …this kind of politics is regressive and not one that suits Maharashtra’s tradition. At this rate, all the time will go in keeping ones’ flock together. At this rate, when will there be any time for development work?”
