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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.

Stranded honcho takes ‘wings’ to Pune

Quaid Najmi
Feb 5
3 min read

Mumbai | Pune: When lakhs of travellers either baked or froze in their vehicles during the massive 33-hour long traffic snarls on the prestigious Mumbai-Pune Expressway, a Pune businessman was all ‘cool’.


Dr. Sudhir Mehta, Chairman of Pinnacle Industries Ltd, Pune, was stuck in the traffic chaos at the Mumbai end for over eight hours and finally decided to ‘rise’ out of it, literally, in a chopper.


He somehow managed to reach the Juhu Aerodrome at Vile Parle, hired a helicopter and reached Pune early on Wednesday. He reported his victory flight in a social media post in detail, and also shot out an earful for the authorities.


Dr. Mehta described his ordeal, as experienced by many thousands, vividly – a snaky ribbon of concrete turned into a massive 100-kms plus long parking lot, wrong-side driving and breaking rules was the norm, with the expressway reduced to a lawless crawl.


A Mumbai commuter revealed how even some suited-booted elites turned into roadside rowdies and were seen hurling the choices abuses at the officialdom, to vent their frustration as many missed medical appointments or national-international flights from either city.


Though officially just an innocuous ‘one gas tanker’ accident near the lush Western Ghats in the Pune-Raigad sector, the fallout exposed the fragility and vulnerability of India’s booming infrastructure projects or how they can simply collapse in such emergencies.


However, as his friend Nitin Welde, a consultant for helicopters in civil aviation, said, it was not a Bollywood-style heroic rescue or a dramatic airlift of Dr. Mehta from the expressway.


Dr. Mehta, whose company is the promoter of EKA, automotive and tech company, reached the Juhu Aerodrome and boarded the chopper like any other chartered passenger – debunking the tales telecast by some television channels – said Welde.


The authorities also got a piece of Dr. Mehta’s mind: “Lakhs of people are stuck on the expressway for the last 18 hours for ‘one gas tanker ‘. For such emergencies we need to plan exits at different points on the expressway which can be opened to allow vehicles to return. Helipads cost less than Rs 10 lakhs to make and require less than one acre of open area. These need to be mandatory at various points near the expressway for emergency evacuation.”


Touching a chord as many thousands lost an entire working day when India’s A-listers could quietly explore an escape route – through the skies – if it was available, particularly for those in dire straits.


A couple of days before, Dr. Mehta had called out to India’s overstretched civil aviation sector, and argued strongly on the need for more airlines, better service, and faster response times.


“The current airlines are woefully inadequate and the quality of service and response time is getting worse by the day. Travelling is inevitable - confusion & hubris isn’t,” declared Dr. Mehta who chucked horse-power for a helicopter.


Mumbai-Pune Expressway unclogs after 33 hrs

The unprecedented and longest ever traffic jam that choked the Mumbai-Pune Expressway finally cleared by Thursday noon and vehicular traffic started zooming back on India’s first access-controlled thoroughfare, officials said.


The expressway that was paralysed from Tuesday evening - when a speeding tanker filled with the deadly propylene gas tanker turned turtle near the Aroshi Tunnel – came back to life as sedans, SUVs, jeeps, tempos, ST and private passenger buses, trucks and tankers slowly started moving shortly after dawn in both directions.


The traffic movement became possible after the authorities managed to shift the leaking gas tanker from the main highway lanes with the help of experts from oil companies before it was declared safe to resume operations on the 94.50 kms long expressway.


Several thousand people including tourists, regular commuters, patients, elderly and kids had to suffer the ordeal for over one full day. Many had no food or water, mobile batteries had drained off, some even exhausted their fuel to critical levels as they kept the vehicle air-conditioners on for hours to beat the daytime heat.


A police official confirmed that by Thursday evening, most of the worst-hit spots were cleared of the traffic logjam and vehicles were moving nearly as normal to and from Mumbai-Pune.

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