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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’s uphill task - dragging Rana to noose

Quaid Najmi
Apr 11, 2025
3 min read

Mumbai: As the euphoria over Dr. Tahawwur Hussain Rana’s extradition subsides, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and its legal team get down to the brass tacks of how to ensure the noose for their prime catch.


Amid a nationwide clamor to hang him, the NIA’s obstacles may be galore – primary and foremost being Rana was absolved of any involvement in the Nov. 26-29, 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, by a Federal Jury in the US District Court in Chicago 14 years ago.


“The jury acquitted Rana of conspiracy to provide material support to the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, that killed more than 160 people, including six Americans,” said a US Justice Department (June 9, 2011) statement, updated on Feb. 5, 2025.


The big buzz in legal, political circles is how the NIA sleuths will grill their ‘trophy’ behind the bars to pave the way for his conviction with the maximum possible sentence.


Akin to Ajmal A. Kasab - the sole terrorist in the 26/11 attacks - who was given a full fair trial including all appeals, pronounced guilty and finally hanged in Pune’s Yerawada Central Jail on November 21, 2012, with no objections raised anywhere in the world.


Legal sources say the quizzing would be based on the investigations in India, plus the probe in the USA, his whereabouts before, during and after 26/11, how he managed to evade suspicions so many times during his five pre-attack and two post-attack visits to India, his other sleeping associates in India.


As per Indian investigations, Rana - along with his childhood mate David Coleman Headley, both aged 64 - set the groundwork for the 26/11 attacks, and had links with Pakistan’s spy agency Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Lashkar-E-Taiba (LeT) and Harkat-Ul-Jihadi Islami.


From Chicago, Rana financed Headley’s Indian recce missions, collecting the money from other dubious elements like his LeT handler Sajid Mir, ISI Major Iqbal and ex-Major Abdul R. Pasha, who had quit the Pakistan Army for better prospects in LeT and then Al-Qaeda, and one Ilyas Kashmiri.


Rana sent funds four times in 2006 – Rs.67,605 (Oct. 11); USD 500 (Nov. 7); Rs 17,636 (Nov. 30), USD 1000 (Dec. 4); plus Rs 80,000 was dispatched from Major Pasha and USD 25,000 from Major Iqbal, as per the NIA probe.


Many aspects were later corroborated by Kasab’s testimony in Mumbai and Headley’s statements during 9-days’ deposition via video-conferencing in Feb-March 2016 after he turned an approver with pardon in the 26/11 case before a Mumbai Special Court.


Legal eagles dare and bare

J. P. MISHRA

Ace criminal lawyer Mishra – who is fighting the Sadhvi Pragnya Singh Thakur case – said for the first time in the country’s history, the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) himself followed-up on Rana’s extradition, but the previous UPA regime merely gave lip service.


He feels that though Rana was acquitted by the US Court, he was actually wrongly tried in the USA for a Mumbai (India) matter. “Consider - could the Sep. 11, 2001 USA terror strikes (9/11) trial be conducted in India or any other country? After sustained investigations by our agencies, the US has accepted India’s (extradition) request on the basis of cogent and convincing evidence implicating Rana,” Mishra told The Perfect Voice.

S. G. ABBAS KAZMI

Criminal lawyer Kazmi – who represented the sole terrorist nabbed alive, Ajmal A. Kasab in the early part of the 26/11 trial in Mumbai – said that whatever arguments India had put up in the US Court will be put up here, though he was let off the hook there. “The allegation is that he (Rana) is the mastermind of the 26/11 terror strikes. Now the NIA and government would have to prove it before the courts here to ensure his conviction,” Kazmi told The Perfect Voice.


Other legal experts requesting anonymity, contend that Rana’s legal battery may exploit to the hilt his acquittal in the 26/11 case by a US Federal Jury.


“India will have to produce additional concrete evidence that can crucify Rana. IT will not be a breeze as believed, with the whole world minutely watching the trial here,” said a lawyer who fought the March 1993 Mumbai terror bombings case.

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