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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.

Sibling Rivalry in Mango Belt

Writer: Aditi Pai
Aditi Pai
Nov 17, 2024
2 min read

Updated: Nov 18, 2024

Uday Samant

Ratnagiri, the heartland of the saffron coloured Alphonso mango will see two brothers in the electoral fray this time as the ‘kingmaker’ now wants to be the metaphorical king. Incumbent minister Uday Samant and his businessman brother Kiran Samant are contesting the polls from neighbouring constituencies.


Hailing from Vengurla, at the southern tip of Sindhudurg, the brothers have made Pali in Ratnagiri their political fiefdom. An astute politician Uday holds the industries portfolio and was among the Shiv Sena leaders who split the party along with Eknath Shinde. Uday, who began his political career with the NCP and later shifted to the Shiv Sena. He’s known as the politician with remarkable ‘timing’—to be on the right side of any opportunity at the best time. Uday made his electoral debut in 2004 and remained an MLA of the NCP until 2014 when he joined the Shiv Sena during the Narendra Modi-led NDA wave. When he realised that the saffron alliance had a higher chance of victory, he switched, but never soured relations with his former party chief or colleagues. In 2014 and 2019, he won the elections from Ratnagiri on a Shiv Sena ticket and was made a minister in the MVA government where he was cabinet minister for higher education and industries. While Uday has held the cabinet portfolio, it is no secret that his older brother Kiran is the one calling the shots, meeting people and addressing their demands on behalf of his brother. When Eknath Shinde and other MLAs were holed up in a hotel in Guwahati, Uday Samant was among the later ones to join the group, after weighing the pros and cons of his decision.


Kiran, better known as Bhaiyya in Ratnagiri, is believed to be the one who has groomed his younger brother for politics and manages the on-ground work for Uday’s elections. A builder, the two brothers run an enterprise. Kiran has been, for long, a political aspirant. The Samant brothers had tried to secure a Lok Sabha nomination for Kiran earlier this year but the BJP picked Narayan Rane instead. It is said that the sulking siblings were miffed by this decision of the party and Rane’s poor showing in Ratnagiri during the parliamentary polls is being attributed to Kiran Samant’s lack of support. While demanding a ticket from Shinde, it is believed that he was even willing to cross over to Shiv Sena (UBT). Kiran has publicly said that this would be his first and last election but would use the next five years to give Rajapur and Lanja a makeover. He’s pitted against Rajan Salvi, a Thackeray loyalist.


With only a few days away for the polls, the powerful Samant brothers are hoping to be in the Maharashtra cabinet together.

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