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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.

Special Court’s verdict on July 31

Quaid Najmi
May 8, 2025
3 min read
Former BJP MP Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Colonel Prasad Purohit leaves the special NIA court in Mumbai on Thursday. Pics: Bhushan Koyande
Former BJP MP Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Colonel Prasad Purohit leaves the special NIA court in Mumbai on Thursday. Pics: Bhushan Koyande

Mumbai: Almost 17 years after a bomb blast shook up the communally sensitive Malegaon town in Nashik, a Special Court here is scheduled to deliver its verdict on July 31, in the sensational case loaded with political overtones.


NIA Special Judge A. K. Lahoti announced that he will pronounce the judgement on July 31, when all the accused in the case have been ordered to remain present in the Special Court.


Ace criminal lawyer J. P. Mishra, representing one of the prime accused Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur said that today (May 8) was the final day when all those in the dock were asked to mark their presence before the Special Court.


“The Special Court said it needs time to study the huge volume of documents submitted on record during the entire trial. The arguments alone went on for some six months,” Mishra told ‘The Perfect Voice’, emerging from the hearing.


The Special Judge had completed the final hearing on April 19 and had summoned all the accused to remain present in the Special Court today, where he disclosed the date of the day of judgement, said Adv. Mishra.


The explosion

The explosion by a powerful bomb - planted on a scooter - took place on Sep. 29, 2008, around 9.35 pm, when Ramzan was in full swing and on the eve of Navratri festival.


At least seven persons were killed and 100 others were injured in the blast which came barely two months before the devastating Nov. 26/11 Mumbai terror strikes.


A Special Court in Mumbai conducted the trial against the prime accused who include former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur.


The other accused are a retired army intelligence officer Lt. Col. Prasad Purohit, ex-army Major Ramesh Upadhyay, Sudhakar Chaturvedi, Ajay Rahirkar, Sameer Kulkarni and Sudhakar Dhar Dwivedi.


They were booked under sections of the Indian Penal Code and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act pertaining to committing terror act, conspiracy, murder, attempt to murder, voluntarily causing hurt and promoting enmity between two religious groups.


ATS probe

The probe was first conducted by the local police and later taken over by the Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) then headed by the 26/11 hero, Hemant Karkare.


The ATS filed its chargesheet in 2009 but later the case was transferred to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in Dec. 2010 which lodged its chargesheet in May 2013 and a supplementary chargesheet in 2016.


The Special Court framed the charges against the seven prime accused on Oct. 30, 2018 and the trial proceeded.


Though the NIA investigations aligned with the ATS probe, there were differences on certain aspects and on July 31, 2009, it recommended dropping charges under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).


The Special Court accepted the recommendations but the Bombay High Court reinstated the MCOCA charges on July 19, 2010.


The hearing of evidence in the case was concluded in Sep. 2023 after examining 323 witnesses, of whom 34 had turned hostile.


Others accused in the case – Pravin Takalki, Shyamlal Sahu and Shivnarayan Kalsangra – were discharged from the case for lack of evidence.


Two others wanted – Ramchandra Kalsangra who along with Sandeep Dange, both from Indore – for allegedly planting the bomb, reportedly died in police custody, as claimed by a suspended police official, Mehboob Mujawar.

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