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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 starts interrogation

Correspondent
Apr 11, 2025
3 min read

New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday began questioning of Mumbai attacks mastermind Tahawwur Hussain Rana here to unravel the larger conspiracy behind the deadly terror strikes of 2008, official sources said.


Rana was brought to the NIA headquarters early Friday morning after a Delhi court granted 18-day custody to the probe agency, following his extradition from the US.


Rana is being kept in a highly-secured cell, inside the anti-terror agency's head office at CGO complex here, being guarded by security personnel round the clock, the sources said.


A 24x7 surveillance is being maintained and Rana has been provided with basic necessities like food and meals among others, they said.


The investigation is being led by NIA's Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Jaya Roy, who is also the Chief Investigating Officer, they said.


"Rana will remain in NIA custody for 18 days, during which time the agency will question him in detail in order to unravel the complete conspiracy behind the deadly 2008 attacks, in which a total of 166 persons were killed and over 238 injured," said a statement issued by the probe agency soon after the court's order.


It is learnt that the interrogation is focused on getting more details on his possible connection with Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which had orchestrated the attacks.


The 64-year-old Pakistani-origin Canadian businessman -- a close associate of key Mumbai terror attacks conspirator David Coleman Headley alias Daood Gilani (a US citizen) — would also be questioned on his suspected links with the officials of Pakistan spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and his exact role behind the attack, the sources said.


The investigators also hope to find some important leads on his travels in parts of northern and southern India, days before the carnage in the country's financial capital on November 26, 2008, they said.


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


They said there could have been a larger conspiracy aimed at targeting other places across the country behind his visits to these places, and the exact details would be ascertained only after his interrogation.


‘Rana helped Headley obtain Indian visa'

Mumbai: Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a key accused in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack case, had helped co-conspirator David Coleman Headley to obtain an Indian visa, a Mumbai police official familiar with the probe has said.


The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday evening formally arrested Rana, who was brought to India after being “successfully extradited” from the US. A special court in Delhi subsequently remanded him in the custody of the agency for 18 days. Rana had served in the Pakistan Army medical corps before emigrating to Canada in the late 1990s and started an 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 a reconnaissance mission in Mumbai prior to the November 2008 attacks and helped him get a ten-year visa extension, the police official said on Thursday. During his stay in India, Headley used the front of running an immigration business and was in regular contact with Rana.


There were more than 230 phone calls between the two during this period, the official said. Rana was also in touch with ‘Major Iqbal', another co-conspirator of the attacks during this period, as per the NIA charge sheet.


‘Indians deserved it'

Mumbai terror attack accused Tahawwur Rana allegedly said the Indians “deserved it" and commended the nine LeT terrorists killed during the attack, suggesting that they should be given "Nishan-e-Haider”, Pakistan's highest gallantry award, according to the US Department of Justice.


"In an intercepted conversation with Headley, Rana allegedly commended the nine LeT terrorists who had been killed committing the attacks, saying that “they should be given Nishan-e-Haider”-Pakistan's highest award for gallantry in battle, which is reserved for fallen soldiers," the statement 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 Department of Justice said in a statement.

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