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By:

Rajendra Pandharpure

15 April 2025 at 7:55:54 pm

The BJP’s Ganesha Gambit

Pune’s Ganeshotsav has become an enormous civic and political stage, and the ruling party has proved adept at occupying it. Pune: The city’s Ganeshotsav is entering its final phase, but the festival has already demonstrated something beyond its extraordinary crowds and familiar spectacle: the extent to which it has become a political stage. This year, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has left a particularly visible imprint on the festivities, using an event that reaches deep into the city’s...

The BJP’s Ganesha Gambit

Pune’s Ganeshotsav has become an enormous civic and political stage, and the ruling party has proved adept at occupying it. Pune: The city’s Ganeshotsav is entering its final phase, but the festival has already demonstrated something beyond its extraordinary crowds and familiar spectacle: the extent to which it has become a political stage. This year, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has left a particularly visible imprint on the festivities, using an event that reaches deep into the city’s neighbourhoods as an opportunity for public outreach. The political appropriation of the festival has not, however, been without a counter-current. Demands were raised for curbs on noise pollution, loudspeakers and the volume of dhol-tasha performances. The argument was not against Ganeshotsav itself, but for moderation - notably, a complete ban on DJ music and limits on the number of dhol and tasha instruments used by performing troupes. Familiar Troubles The festival’s reality has been rather different. Major roads have been occupied by mandaps. Processions celebrating the arrival of Lord Ganesha have unfolded amid punishing noise. DJ music, while subject to restrictions, has continued. Traffic congestion has become a familiar feature of the festival, with the movement of political leaders adding another layer to the city’s already strained roads. The Peth areas have remained crowded deep into the night. The Shrimant Dagdusheth Halwai Ganpati temple has drawn enormous crowds for darshan from the opening day. From the old city to housing societies and neighbourhood mandals, Ganeshotsav touches virtually every part of Pune. For a political party seeking a direct connection with citizens, few occasions offer such a ready-made network of people, institutions and local influencers. The BJP enters this festival with an unusually formidable organisational base. It has two MPs, seven MLAs and more than 100 corporators in Pune. Murlidhar Mohol, one of the city’s MPs, is a Union Minister of State. Chandrakant Patil is a Cabinet minister in the Maharashtra government, while Madhuri Misal is a Minister of State. The party’s presence also extends into the festival’s organisational architecture. Its influence is visible across numerous mandals, large and small. BJP MLA Hemant Rasane is General Secretary of the Shrimant Dagdusheth Halwai Sarvajanik Ganpati Trust. Kunal Tilak, a member of Lokmanya Tilak’s family, is a BJP corporator. The political and cultural histories of Pune therefore intersect in ways that are difficult to ignore. The BJP’s senior leadership has also made the most of the occasion. National President Nitin Nabin visited Pune to seek Lord Ganesha’s blessings, while Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis visited the city before and during the festival. Such visits are about more than religious observance. In a festival watched by millions and embedded in the city’s social life, political visibility comes almost automatically. There is also talk in Pune that the BJP provided substantial financial support to Dhol-Lezim troupes and their organisers, with claims that some major mandals received financial backing as well. These claims would require independent verification, but the perception itself points to the depth of the political contest around Ganeshotsav. BJP workers, according to local observers, have also sought to make their presence more conspicuous than that of festivities organised by housing societies. Useful Expedient The festival arrives at a politically useful moment for the BJP. The party has faced disquiet on several fronts. Young people have been agitated over the paper-leak controversy. Broader public dissatisfaction has been voiced over inflation and unemployment, while government policies relating to ethanol and charges associated with UPI transactions have also generated criticism. While a political party can defend a policy in a press conference and advertise its achievements, during Ganeshotsav, its workers can be physically present in neighbourhoods, among processions, mandals, cultural groups and devotees. Politics thus becomes less about argument and more about visibility. That is the BJP’s advantage in Pune. Ganeshotsav, after all, is not simply a sequence of religious rituals. It is an elaborate civic network involving local organisers, volunteers, cultural groups, businesses, residents and political representatives. Whoever has influence over that network acquires a powerful channel of communication with the city. The BJP appears to understand this particularly well. Its strength in Pune’s electoral politics has been reinforced by a presence that extends beyond elections and into the institutions and social spaces that organise public life. The irony is that the very scale of the festival that makes it politically attractive also magnifies the civic costs. The political value of Ganeshotsav and the civic burden it creates are therefore two sides of the same phenomenon. For Pune, the larger question is not whether politics has entered Ganeshotsav. It has done so for decades. The more consequential question is whether the festival’s extraordinary social capital will remain primarily a vehicle for political outreach or whether the same influence can be used to reconcile celebration with the ordinary civic needs of the city. For the moment, the BJP seems to have understood the first proposition better than most.

Hundreds in lurch after investor’s death

Quaid Najmi
Jan 14, 2025
2 min read

A victim says there is a scam worth Rs 16 crore

Torres jewelry fraud

Mumbai: As the Torres jewelry fraud rages, another investment scam has come to the fore in Thane where an investor allegedly duped hundreds of people from Mumbai and elsewhere of crores of Rupees, before his death, one of the victims said here on Monday.


In December 2024, some of the victims had approached the Thane Police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW) Deputy Commissioner of Police Parag Manere who took immediate cognizance and ordered a preliminary probe before registering a FIR on January 8.


The duped persons got a shock when they learnt that their 'trusted' investor – Sameer Purushottam Hirlekar, aged around 53 – had died on December 4, leaving them in the lurch. The victims suspect that he allegedly ended his life.

Rattled by the abrupt development putting a question mark on their ‘investments’, one of them Vinay D. Kochrekar, 60, finally lodged the FIR with Thane Police which was already conducting the preliminary probe for a month.


“In my group of around two dozen, we have been cheated of several crores, and our guess is the scam may be worth around Rs 16-crores. The police are probing the true extent of the fraud. If more people come forward, the situation may be different,” said a victim, Tejas S. Phondke of Borivali.

Recounting the modus operandi adopted by Hirlekar, Phondke said that he, like others, started with a reference around two years ago.


Though initially skeptical, they slowly developed confidence in Hirlekar’s lucrative schemes, many inspired by catchy Bollywood names – '10 Ka Dum', 'Satte Pe Satta', 'Hum Paanch', 'Paanch Ka Paanch', 'Super 30', 'Classic Tally', 'Super Spectrum', 'Spectrum Symphony Tally', 'Dynamic' series, et al – each designed to give fabulous returns depending on the invested amount and tenure.


“Hirlekar appeared very transparent in his dealings with us, the promised returns were promptly transferred to our accounts at the end of the month. As we gained confidence, we invested more – I sunk in the entire savings for my wedding, and now this has happened,” rued Phondke, 27, an e-commerce trader.


During the advance probe, on December 10 an EOW police team raided Hirlekar’s home at Panchpakhadi in Thane, in the constituency of Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.


However, barring two small gold rings, the police came back empty-handed and now Hirlekar’s widow Prachi and a son Soham - both reportedly non-cooperative with the probe - have purportedly gone incommunicado, adding to the suspicions.


“The present status is that the prime accused is dead, the whereabouts and the involvement of his family is not known and many of us have lost our entire life-savings or retirement monies. The police said that they are still scanning all phone, bank records of the scamster for leads on the others possibly involved in the fraud,” said a dejected Phondke.


Hirlekar operated through his own bank Savings Account and barely six months ago he opened a Current Account for the transactions, adding to his reputation – which turned dubious after his death.


Hirlekar’s family could not be contacted for their response.

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