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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.

Question mark over existence of ‘Brand Thackeray’

Writer: Abhijit Mulye
Abhijit Mulye
Aug 20, 2025
2 min read

Mumbai: The devastating defeat in the much-hyped BEST Credit Society election has underlined the question mark on existence of ‘Brand Thackeray’ all the while sending out a loud and clear message that only sincere hard work at the ground level would enable an electoral victory in Mumbai.


The Shiv Sena(UBT) and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) alliance, that was sending out messages of complete sweep on the day of counting, failed miserably and their ‘Utkarsh Panel’ couldn’t even secure a single seat in the credit society that the Shiv Sena (UBT) had almost single handedly controlled for almost a decade. On the other side, out of 21 seats, the panel led by labour leader Shashank Rao won 14 seats, and the Sahakar Samruddhi panel led by BJP legislators Prasad Lad and Nitesh Rane along with Shiv Sena’s Kiran Pawaskar could secure only seven. Since Rao had joined the BJP last year, technically the ruling Mahayuti alliance of the state has established complete control over an institution that the Shiv Sena had been controlling for decades.


Shiv Sena (UBT)’s Suhas Samant, under whose leadership Utkarsh Panel contested the election, accused the play of money-power for the defeat of his panel. However, Rao stated that the issue of gratuity for retired workers had become a key issue in this election and it was due to the quick action taken by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, his panel could win the elections. Rao also accused the Shiv Sena (UBT) leadership of indecision while controlling the credit society and rampant corruption while controlling the BEST society for over 25 years before that. “People had been seeing all these things helplessly for all these years. They vented out their anger,” Rao said.


The MNS was contesting these elections for the first time. They were solely dependent on Shiv Sena (UBT), who was confident of the magic of ‘Brand Thackeray’. Raj Thackeray is a great crowd puller. But, he fails in converting the crowds to votes. This has been established numerous times in various elections from local body to assembly. Today it was repeated even in a credit society election.


Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut tried to underplay the results stating that he doesn’t keep count of such small elections like that of a credit society.


Around 14,000 BEST employees voted in this election. The panel that had their distinct stamp could perform only to a certain extent.


It seems people rejected Thackeray brand: Fadnavis

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said Wednesday that the defeat of Shiv Sena (UBT) and MNS in the BEST Employees Cooperative Credit Society election suggests public rejection of the Thackeray brand.


He revealed that the two panels led by Shashank Rao and Prasad Lad that swept the election belonged to the BJP, and took potshots at the two parties led by the Thackeray cousins for politicising the contest. "I think there was no need to politicise this kind of election, as it was just a credit society poll. But they politicised it by making tall claims that the Thackeray brand will win. But it seems people did not like it. The poll outcome reflected rejection by the people," Fadnavis said.


He stressed that the Mahayuti didn't politicise the elections.

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