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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.

Mumbai’s High-Stakes Civic War

Writer: Abhijit Joshi
Abhijit Joshi
Apr 18, 2025
3 min read

In the world’s most frenetic city, controlling the BMC means controlling the future.

Beneath Mumbai’s glittering skyline and frantic pace, an intense battle is unfolding for the control of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), India’s richest civic body. Long the fiefdom of the undivided Shiv Sena, whose founder Balasaheb Thackeray embodied its Marathi identity, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) now covets it.


With an annual budget exceeding Rs. 52,000 crore, control of the BMC is much more than municipal governance. It is about commanding resources and positioning for the future.


Since 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah have transformed the BJP into a relentless electoral machine, seeking to dominate not only Parliament but every rung of Indian governance. Their goal now is to consolidate power at the grassroots, beginning with urban strongholds like Mumbai.


Success has not come easily. It took a decade after forming the national government to install a BJP Chief Minister in Delhi. Maharashtra, too, has seen BJP-led governments, but the mayor’s seat in Mumbai has remained out of reach - a gap that Devendra Fadnavis, the party’s most formidable leader in the state, is determined to close.


The Shiv Sena’s long grip on Mumbai has weakened since Balasaheb’s death in 2012 and its 2022 split into two factions – one led by Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) and the second, by Deputy CM Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena. The split has opened new opportunities for the BJP but also new complications.


Case in point: Eknath Shinde’s recent meeting with Raj Thackeray, leader of theMaharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). Despite having zero electoral clout, Raj continues to have a significant sway in Mumbai's Marathi heartland.


His growing warmth with Shinde may signal a political chess move to cut into BJP’s voter base or bargain for more municipal control. Fadnavis isn’t taking any chances.


To tighten BJP’s grip on Mumbai, there’s buzz around a change in the city’s partyleadership. Pravin Darekar, a senior BJP leader with roots in Mumbai’scooperative banking sector, is being seen as a frontrunner for the post of Mumbai BJP president.


Darekar reportedly has a good working relationship with Raj Thackeray. This could help Fadnavis neutralize any growing rapport between Shinde and Raj.


While Fadnavis may be willing to cede the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) to ally Ajit Pawar, Mumbai and Nagpur are non-negotiable. The latter civic body, especially, is Fadnavis’s stronghold - politically, emotionally and symbolically.


Behind the scenes, the BJP’s ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is quietly observing the run-up to the civic polls. Its influence in shaping public discourse and mobilizing workers is crucial. RSS leader Bhayyaji Joshi’s controversial statement in Ghatkopar wherein he remarked that not everyone in Mumbai needed to speak Marathi shows how carefully crafted narratives can spark debates, define identity politics and influence electoralbehaviour.


The RSS knows how to move without making noise. In a city stitched together by dozens of languages and loyalties, it is all about timing, about shaping sentiment quietly.


The Sena (UBT), battered but not broken, still leans heavily on Mumbai’s civic machinery. Lose the BMC, and the party bleeds money, power and relevance. Fadnavis and the BJP understand this better than anyone.


On the other side, Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray is trying to redraw the fight as a referendum on ambition. He has accused the BJP of mismanaging the city, of letting Mumbai drift while other states build economic hubs like Gujarat’s GIFT City. His bet is that voters will want a city that thinks bigger, not just fights dirtier.


But for now, the promises of transformation are background noise. The BMC election is about command: who runs the streets, the pipes, the schools - and who gets to decide who eats first.


The BJP, fresh off a commanding victory in the 2024 state elections, must now prove it can manage not just its enemies, but its allies too. The Mahayuti coalition that won the Assembly could just as easily splinter when faced with the slower, messier grind of municipal politics.


Young voters will have a hand in what happens next. For them, the BMC is not an abstraction. It is the quality of the water they drink, the time it takes to get to work, the job they may or may not find. In Mumbai, politics is infrastructure. And infrastructure is survival.


In a city where the lights rarely go out, neither does the fight for power.

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