PUNE/MUMBAI: Just an hour was left for withdrawal of nominations on Thursday when the Congress finally responded to requests from the Pawar family and the Mahayuti partners and dropped its candidate against NCP chief and deputy chief minister Sunetra Pawar in the Baramati bye-election. Twenty-two independent candidates still remain in the contest, but now there is no major challenge to the widow of Ajit Pawar, whose death in an aeroplane crash on Jan 28 has necessitated the bypoll. Polling is to be conducted on April 23 and votes will be counted on May 4. Maharashtra Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, Sunetra Pawar, and NCP (SP) MP Supriya Sule and MLA Rohit Pawar spoke to senior Congress party leaders to persuade the party not to field a candidate in Baramati, a constituency Ajit Pawar had been representing since 1991. Even NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar, who had earlier said the Congress was not wrong in contesting the Baramati bypoll, now advised his alliance partner to withdraw. “Maharashtra lost a talented politician like Ajit Pawar. The Baramati seat fell vacant due to a tragic accident and against this backdrop, my advice to the Congress would be to not contest the seat. It is a national party and we can at most appeal to them. Ultimately, it must decide,” Sharad Pawar said. Rohit Pawar met state Congress chief Harshwardhan Sapkal in Mumbai requesting withdrawal, after which another delegation of NCP leaders, including MLA Sana Malik, met him for the same purpose. Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis called Sapkal on the phone. “I requested Sapkal to follow the tradition of Maharashtra and withdraw from Baramati the way BJP did after the death of former home minister R R Patil,” he said.