Too Many Cooks in Pune

The city’s civic poll contest has turned into a free-for-all, exposing how Maharashtra’s once-stable alliances have unravelled owing to selfish ambition

Pune: Pune’s municipal election was once a relatively orderly affair, governed by predictable coalitions and familiar rivalries. This time it resembles a crowded roundabout with no right of way. The collapse of both the ruling Mahayuti and the Opposition Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) has produced a four-cornered contest in almost every ward, transforming what should have been a referendum on civic governance into a stress test for Maharashtra’s splintered politics.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), opting for muscular self-reliance, is contesting 157 of the 165 seats in the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) on its own, supplemented by eight allotted to the Republican Party and one sponsored candidate. Both factions of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) are fielding more than 100 candidates each, most under the familiar clock symbol that once unified them. Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena faction has nominated 111 candidates, while the Congress has put up 90, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) 70, and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) 44. Even within nominal alliances, ‘friendly contests’ abound with the Congress and the Sena (UBT) facing each other in around 20 wards.

Political Unravelling

Behind this arithmetic lies a deeper political unravelling. The uneasy coexistence of uncle Sharad Pawar and his usurper nephew Ajit Pawar has finally snapped, taking down both the BJP-led Mahayuti and the opposition MVA with it. In their place has emerged a latticework of tactical understandings that vary by city and convenience. In Pune, the Congress has tied up with Sena (UBT) and the MNS, while Ajit Pawar’s NCP has drawn closer to a faction of the Republican Party led by Sachin Kharat. The Prakash Ambedkar-led Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA), which has aligned with the Congress in Mumbai, is going it alone in Pune. The Aam Aadmi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and a scattering of smaller outfits complete the picture.

For voters, the result is bewilderment while opportunistic politicians make hay. In many wards the real contest has narrowed to a straight fight between the BJP and one or the other NCP faction, despite the apparent multiplicity of players. The churn has been accelerated by defections on an industrial scale. As the BJP denied tickets to 42 sitting corporators, a procession of disappointed aspirants crossed the aisle to secure nominations elsewhere. Former BJP corporators such as Amol Balwadkar, Dhananjay Jadhav, Prakash Dhore, Archana Musale and Shankar Pawar have resurfaced as NCP or Shiv Sena candidates, often pitted against their former colleagues.

Dynastic politics, far from fading, has adapted neatly to the chaos. Surendra Pathare, son of Sharad Pawar-aligned MLA Bapusaheb Pathare, has joined the BJP and received tickets for both himself and his wife. Prithviraj Sutar, son of former minister Shashikant Sutar, has defected from Sena (UBT) to the BJP and been duly rewarded. Abhijeet Shivarkar, son of former Congress minister Balasaheb Shivarkar, has made a similar journey. Elsewhere, Sunny Nimhan, son of ex-MLA Vinayak Nimhan, is contesting on a BJP ticket, while the son of former Congress minister Ramesh Bagwe remains with his father’s party.

Senior Figures

The organisational churn has drawn senior figures into the fray. City chiefs of almost every major party - the BJP’s Dhiraj Ghate, Congress’s Arvind Shinde, Ajit Pawar NCP’s Subhash Jagtap, Sena (UBT)’s Sanjay More, Shinde Sena’s Nana Bhangire, MNS’s Sainath Babar and AAP’s Sudarshan Jagdale - are contesting, as is the mercurial Dhananjay Benkar. Their presence underlines both the stakes involved and the absence of clear command structures.

If there is any leader who is emblematic of this confusion, it is Prashant Jagtap. The city president of Sharad Pawar’s NCP, he resigned in protest against any accommodation with Ajit Pawar’s faction, joined the Congress and is now contesting from Wanwadi. His move encapsulates the moral fatigue of cadre caught between loyalty and viability.

Uncertainty had reigned until the final day of withdrawals as candidate lists were delayed and alliances were revised. Only the BJP moved swiftly to declare its slate, a small but telling advantage in a contest where clarity itself has become a political asset.

For Pune, the danger is that pressing civic problems like water supply, transport and planning will be drowned out by the din of factional warfare. The four-way contest in Pune is a preview of a political order in which everyone runs, but no one quite leads.