With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) making strenuous efforts ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election to capture Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar’s stronghold of Baramati, Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly Ajit Pawar on Thursday, in a jibe at the BJP, said that those who attempted to storm Baramati generally lost their deposits.
Addressing NCP workers at a party event in Pune, Mr. Pawar, the former Deputy Chief Minister in the erstwhile ‘Maha Vikas Aghadi’ 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 Baramati in rural Pune.
“Will anything come of leaving everything aside and trying to storm Baramati? In the last election [2019 Maharashtra Assembly election], they [the 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,” quipped Mr. Pawar, who has been an MLA from the Baramati Assembly segment for nearly 30 years now.
