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By:

Rajendra Pandharpure

15 April 2025 at 2:25:54 pm

Pune’s changing political guard

After an eight-year hiatus, the municipal elections promise to usher in a new cohort of politicians and reset the city’s political rhythms Pune:  The long-delayed civic polls herald a generational shift in Pune, arguably Maharashtra’s most politically vibrant city. When voters return to the booths in December, they will be resetting the circuitry of local power. The last municipal elections were held in 2017. Since then, the city’s politics have drifted into a liminal space. The Pune...

Pune’s changing political guard

After an eight-year hiatus, the municipal elections promise to usher in a new cohort of politicians and reset the city’s political rhythms Pune:  The long-delayed civic polls herald a generational shift in Pune, arguably Maharashtra’s most politically vibrant city. When voters return to the booths in December, they will be resetting the circuitry of local power. The last municipal elections were held in 2017. Since then, the city’s politics have drifted into a liminal space. The Pune Municipal Corporation’s (PMC) term expired in May 2022, but the state dithered, leaving India’s seventh-largest city without elected urban governance for almost three years. With the prospect of polls repeatedly deferred, many former corporators had since quietly receded from the daily grind of politics, returning to business interests or simply losing relevance. When the long-pending reservation lottery for civic wards was finally conducted recently, it delivered another shock: dozens of established male aspirants discovered that their seats had vanished from under them. New guard All this has created an unusual political vacuum that younger leaders are eager to fill. Parties across the spectrum, from the BJP to the Congress to the NCP factions, are preparing to field fresher faces. Regardless of who wins, Pune seems destined to witness the rise of a new political class. The churn is already visible. In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, both the BJP’s Murlidhar Mohol and the Congress’s then-candidate Ravindra Dhangekar were relative newcomers to national politics. The city’s Assembly seats have also produced new faces in recent years, including Hemant Rasne and Sunil Kamble. Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party elevated Subhash Jagtap and Sunil Tingre to leadership roles, giving them a platform to shape the party’s urban strategy. Even the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), a peripheral entity in Pune’s political landscape, is preparing to contest the civic polls with a wholly new leadership slate. The party most uneasy about this transition may be the Congress. Despite routinely polling between 550,000 and 600,000 votes in the city, it has struggled to convert electoral presence into organisational revival. As the Bihar election results were being announced recently, one Pune resident summed up a sentiment widely shared among Congress sympathisers: the party has votes, but not enough dynamic young leaders to carry them. The question, as he put it, is not whether the youth can help the Congress, but whether the Congress will let them. Rewind to the early 2000s, and Pune’s political landscape looked very different. The Congress then had a formidable bench which included Suresh Kalmadi, Chandrakant Shivarkar, Mohan Joshi, Ramesh Bagwe and Abhay Chhajed. The BJP had Pradeep Rawat, Anil Shirole, Girish Bapat, Vijay Kale, Vishwas Gangurde and Dilip Kamble. Sharad Pawar’s NCP, then ascendant, rested on leaders like Ajit Pawar, Ankush Kakade, Vandana Chavan and Ravi Malvadkar. But the 2014 BJP wave flattened the hierarchy. The Congress crumbled; Kalmadi and Rawat faded from view; Gangurde exited the stage. The BJP replaced its old guard with Medha Kulkarni, and then Mukta Tilak, Chandrakant Patil, Bhimrao Tapkir, Madhuri Misal and Jagdish Mulik. Now, as Pune approaches the end of 2025, even Mohol - the BJP’s rising star - risks appearing ‘senior’ in a political landscape tilting toward younger contenders. Demographics are accelerating the shift. Given that Pune’s last civic polls took place eight years ago, an entire cohort of voters since then has reached adulthood. They cast their first ballots in the recent Lok Sabha and Assembly elections; now they will vote in municipal elections for the first time. Their concerns include urban mobility, climate resilience, digital governance, employment differ sharply from the older generation’s priorities. Their political loyalties, still fluid, are likely to crystallise around leaders who can speak to these new anxieties. The coming election promises a radical change in Pune’s political ecosystem. Long dominated by legacy figures, that ecosystem is set for nothing less than a generational reset. The departure of veteran leaders, the decennial rebalancing of parties, and the impatience of a newly enfranchised urban youth all point towards a younger, more competitive, and possibly more unpredictable political order. Whether this transition will deliver better governance remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: the next generation seems determined not to wait another eight years to make itself heard.

Three ways to avoid Traffic issues in Pune

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The road widening program taken up by Pune Municipal Corporation is very helpful to ease the traffic problem as a short-term measure. For long term, the following measures are suggested: Educaion, Engineering and Enforcement


Children are the drivers of tomorrow, they learn many of their behaviors and attitudes from the adults of today. We regard citizen education as being central to the delivery of our core values, in the changing of habits and behaviors and supporting new initiatives and schemes to make our roads safer. We should launch resources to assist in this program of safety education offering resources that can be used by the Agency or its stakeholders to promote a safer network for all.


With Citizenship becoming an ever higher priority for the curriculum in both Primary and Secondary schools, we believe that improving and increasing our citizen education will contribute to improvements in safety on our roads. The NBF hasn’t stopped its engineering role; however more people are asking for better information: “Why is this happening?” “What are its benefits”, “How will this make our roads less congested and safer?”


Engineering steps

There should not be any stop at all in rush hours on few roads. We see lot of shop owner and society, apartment members park their vehicles on road causes traffic jam. We should avoid it. We should implement limited parking on few roads.


We should use separate bus lane for PMT stop. It is observed that the bus parking cause traffic snarls in peak hour. Close down unwanted cut of crossing the lanes. Build railing on road divider to prevent crossing road from anywhere. 


Remove encroachment

We observed rush hours between 9-11 am and 5-7 pm. If we can change the office timings of some government and private establishments we could solve the traffic problem. It is observed traffic is less on holidays.


We suggest that metro stations should have adequate parking facilities and each route should reach out of PMC limit. Flyovers need to be built at several places. Earmark separate space for auto rockshaws. Free footpaths from encroachments. Operate buses on time. No parking or halting should be allowed in a chowk.


(The writer is the President of an NGO Nirman Bharati. Views personal.)

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