Stating that celebrities who obtained elected weren’t all the time eager on improvement works of their constituencies, Nationalist Congress Social gathering (NCP) chief and Maharashtra Deputy CM Ajit Pawar on Monday acknowledged that it had been a mistake to provide a ticket in 2019 to actor-politician Dr. Amol Kolhe, the incumbent MP of Shirur in Pune district.
He additional made clear that the battle traces between each the rival NCP camps had been clearly drawn by this time, and that no staff should be doubtful concerning the Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar camps coming collectively.
Addressing a rally in Shirur Lok Sabha constituency, Mr. Ajit Pawar took on Dr. Kolhe – amongst a handful of loyalists within the Sharad Pawar-led NCP faction – on his turf, remarking that “politics was not the actor’s forte”.
“Often, if we politicians cannot defeat a rival candidate, we prop up a celebrity who even get elected owing to their mass popularity. Hema Malini has won, so did Sunny Deol. Dharmendra, Rajesh Khanna, Shatrughan Sinha all have been fielded. The question is what relation do these celebrities have with politics. Once they gave a ticket to Amitabh Bachchan, who, however, realised very soon that politics was not his cup of tea,” stated the NCP chief.
Admitting his error in giving a ticket to Dr. Kolhe within the final Normal Election, Mr. Pawar revealed that the previous reportedly needed to resign barely two years into his time period as newly-elected MP from the Shirur Lok Sabha seat.
Dr. Kolhe, greatest recognized for essaying the roles of the warrior King Chhatrapati Shivaji and that of his son, Chhatrapati Sambhaji, in two wildly common vernacular sequence, had emerged as a giant-killer within the 2019 Normal Election by defeating three-time MP and Shiv Sena chief Shivajirao Adhalrao-Patil from Shirur.
“We are at fault at giving him a ticket. I thought he speaks well, he has a royal bearing, so both me and Dilip Walse-Patil brought him into our party and campaigned hard to ensure his [Dr. Kolhe’s] victory. After just two years, he was telling me he wanted to resign, stating that he was an artiste and that his political duties were impacting his films and theatre-work. I told him do not resign as it looked bad. He said it [political and social duties] was affecting his trade,” stated Ajit Pawar.
“Actually, politics is not his forte. The point is whether celebrities are keen on doing development works in their areas. People find celebrities promising and vote for them. We [politicians] are also at fault for propping them up without knowing their capabilities,” stated Mr. Pawar, along with his trademark candour.
Taking an additional swipe at Dr. Kolhe, Mr. Pawar, who was accountable in getting the actor-politico to defect from the Shiv Sena to the NCP in 2019, stated there was no waying of understanding what went contained in the minds of celebrities.
“I met him [Dr. Kolhe] recently, and he says he wants to contest again. Now, how will this kind of a vacillating attitude work? How many times has he visited his constituency since he was elected in 2019? There are serious problems affecting Shirur constituency, not least water and agricultural woes,” Mr. Ajit Pawar stated.
On the time of the final Normal Election, the undivided NCP, after strenuous efforts had managed a lot to induce Dr. Kolhe to modify sides from the Shiv Sena to Sharad Pawar’s occasion with a view to trounce Shivajirao Adhalrao-Patil of the Shiv Sena.
Thought-about a political light-weight, Dr. Kolhe stunned everybody by defeating Mr. Adhalrao-Patil and managing to win in a yr when the NCP and the Congress had been combating for his or her very existence in opposition to the Modi juggernaut.
Dr. Kolhe, who distinguished himself in Parliament by profitable the ‘Sansad Ratna’ award thrice, determined to remain on with Sharad Pawar after the break up.
For Ajit Pawar, Shirur has turn out to be a status battle, and he has publicly said that he would actively work to defeat Dr. Kolhe by selecting an appropriate candidate in opposition to him.
It’s nearly sure that Mr. Adhalrao-Patil – Dr. Kolhe’s nemesis – is prone to be pitted in opposition to the actor-politico.