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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.

NIA gets the 26/11 attacks planner; eyes on justice

Correspondent
Apr 10, 2025
3 min read

Tahawwur Rana formally arrested after extradition from the US

Tahawwur Hussain Rana with NIA officials upon his arrival at the IGI Airport, in New Delhi. Pic: PTI
Tahawwur Hussain Rana with NIA officials upon his arrival at the IGI Airport, in New Delhi. Pic: PTI

New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday "formally arrested" Tahawwur Hussain Rana, the key accused in the deadly 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, immediately after he landed at the Delhi airport following his extradition from the United States, an official statement said.


Rana, 64-year-old Canadian citizen of Pakistan origin, was escorted to Delhi by teams of NIA and National Security Guard (NSG), comprising senior officials, on a special plane from Los Angeles, the agency said.


The NIA investigation team at the airport arrested Rana, a Canadian national of Pakistani origin living primarily in Chicago (US), soon after he emerged from the airplane, after completing all the necessary legal formalities, it said.


The NIA said in a statement that it had secured the successful extradition after years of sustained and concerted efforts to bring to justice the key conspirator behind the 2008 mayhem that claimed 166 lives.


"With the active assistance of USDoJ, the US Sky Marshal, NIA worked closely with other Indian intelligence agencies, NSG through the entire extradition process, which also saw India's Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Home Affairs coordinating with the other relevant authorities in the United States to take the matter to its successful conclusion," the statement read.


Senior advocate Dayan Krishnan and special public prosecutor Narender Mann, who are representing the NIA, reached the Patiala House court premises shortly after news that he had landed in Delhi. Police officials asked mediapersons to leave and said they were ensuring the court premises were fully vacant.


The lawyers, however, refused to comment.


Efforts of years

The agency secured Rana's extradition following years of sustained and concerted efforts and after the terror mastermind's last-ditch efforts to get a stay on his extradition from the US failed.


With the coordinated efforts of India's Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Home Affairs, along with the relevant authorities in the United States, the NIA said it worked closely with other Indian intelligence agencies through the entire extradition process, which marked a major step in India's efforts to bring individuals involved in terrorism to justice, irrespective of which part of the world they had fled to.


Rana was being held in judicial custody in the US pursuant to proceedings initiated by the NIA under the India-US Extradition Treaty.


Headley’s helper

He is accused of conspiring with David Coleman Headley alias Daood Gilani, and operatives of designated terrorist organisations Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Harkat-ul-Jihadi Islami (HUJI) along with other Pakistan-based co-conspirators, to carry out the devastating terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008.


Rana had served in the Pakistan Army medical corps before emigrating to Canada in late 1990s and started his immigration consultancy firm. He later moved to the US and set up an office in Chicago.


Through his firm, Rana gave cover to Headley to carry out reconnaissance mission in Mumbai so that the terrorists could launch the attacks.


Rana visited Hapur and Agra in Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Kochi in Kerala, Ahmedabad in Gujarat, and Mumbai in Maharashtra with his wife Samraz Rana Akhtar between November 13 and November 21, 2008.


A total of 166 people were killed and more than 238 injured in the deadly attacks.


Critical step toward seeking justice: US

New York: The extradition of Mumbai terror attacks accused Tahawwur Hussain Rana is a “critical step toward seeking justice” for the victims of the heinous attacks, the US said on Thursday.


The United States on Wednesday extradited Rana, a Canadian citizen and a native of Pakistan, to stand trial in India on 10 criminal charges stemming from his alleged role in the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, a Justice Department spokesperson said.


“Rana's extradition is a critical step toward seeking justice for the six Americans and scores of other victims who were killed in the heinous attacks,” the spokesperson for the US Department of Justice said in a statement to PTI.


Nothing to do with 'Canadian national': Pakistan

Islamabad: Pakistan on Thursday said that it has nothing to do with the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack accused Tahawwur Rana, asserting that he is a Canadian national and has not renewed his Pakistani documents for over two decades.


"He is a Canadian national and as per our record he has not renewed his Pakistani documents for over two decades," Foreign Office spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan said while responding to a question during his weekly press briefing here.


Though the spokesperson stopped short of providing details of "documents", such documents often include a national identity card for overseas Pakistanis and a passport.

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