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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.

SS (UBT) to rebels: No merger allowed

Quaid Najmi
Jul 14
2 min read

Mumbai: Setting the ball rolling for a legal battle, the Shiv Sena (UBT) has shot off missives to each of the six MPs who have announced allegiance to the Shiv Sena led by Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde pointing that ‘no merger’ has been permitted as claimed.

 

Shiv Sena (UBT) Parliamentary Party (Lok Sabha) Leader and Mumbai South MP Arvind Sawant, has written the letters to six MPs - copies of which were also sent to Speaker Om Birla – which were released today, days ahead of the Monsoon Session of Parliament starting next week.

 

Responding to the move, Shinde said that “all laws and rules have been followed” after the six SS (UBT) MPs came to the Shiv Sena. He added: “What value has Sawant’s letter got?”

 

Merger of Senas

In the letters, Sawant said it had come to the knowledge of the SS (UBT) through reports in public domain that those MPs were attempting to portray that ‘there is a merger of the SS (UBT) with the Shiv Sena’ headed by Shinde.

 

“It is also learnt that you had approached the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, claiming that you have merged - or seeking recognition of this purported ‘merger’,” said Sawant in the letters.

 

“At the outset, it is made clear that SS (UBT), being the original political party, has neither initiated, agreed to, nor permitted any merger with the Shiv Sena headed by Eknath Shinde, or with any other political party whatsoever. This position has been categorically affirmed by Paksha Pramukh (Party President) Uddhav Thackeray,” he asserted.

 

Hence, in the absence of any merger of the original political party with any other political outfit, there was no question of any merger of the legislature party, Sawant pointed out. 

 

“Further no such merger is permissible or contemplated in law. Paragraph four of the Tenth Schedule to the Constitution of India merely affords the legislators an option to accept or reject a merger of the original political party; it does not confer upon the members of the legislature party any authority to themselves independently bring about, or effect, such a merger,” he said on the legal position.

 

SS (UBT) Tickets

Moreover, the six MPs were given tickets by SS (UBT), contested against Shiv Sena with the symbol, mandate and support of the SS (UBT) in the last Lok Sabha elections (2024).

 

Sawant reiterated that the SS (UBT) has already made a representation to the Speaker of Lok Sabha (on June 24) and urged that no request seeking recognition of any merger - or of any separate group - made by any Shiv Sena (UBT) MPs who were elected on the SS (UBT) symbol (Flaming Torch) should be entertained. 

 

“Pursuant thereto, the Speaker was pleased to afford an opportunity of hearing to the duly authorized representative of the party, which opportunity was availed. It is a matter of record that, thereafter, the Speaker has not passed any order recognizing any claim of merger,” Sawant stated.

 

A SS (UBT) leader said that this indicates the start of a legal battle between the party and the six rebels (out of the total 9 MPs) who quit the party for Shiv Sena on June 22.

 

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