Pune: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Nitin Kalje and Shailaja More, candidates for the mayoral post in the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC), were elected unopposed as the mayor and the deputy mayor on Tuesday.
The decks were cleared for Mr. Kalje after the Nationalist Congress Party’s (NCP) mayoral candidate, Shyam Lande, took back his nomination at the last minute.
The mayor’s post is reserved for an OBC candidate for the first two-and-a-half years. With this election, Mr. Kalje has become the first BJP mayor of the PCMC.
The party won a landslide victory in the recently concluded PCMC polls, bagging 77 of the 128 seats and breaking a decade-long hold of the Sharad Pawar-led NCP over the civic body.
The NCP won only 36 seats, and many of its top leaders, like Mahesh Landge and Azam Pansare, had defected to the BJP in the run-up to the polls. There was disgruntlement in the BJP camp over Mr. Kalje’s candidature as he is widely perceived to be Mr. Landge’s pick. This alienated a strong faction within the party led by BJP MLA Laxman Jagtap, a former NCP heavyweight.
History in Nashik
In the Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC) too BJP candidates Ranjana Bhansi and Prathamesh Gite were elected unopposed as the mayor and the deputy mayor.
The BJP swept the NMC as well, winning 66 of the 122 seats. The party had announced it’s mayoral candidature last week. The Congress had fielded Asha Tadvi as its mayoral candidate while the NCP had propped up Sushama Pagare for the deputy mayor’s post.
However, at the request of the BJP candidates, the opposition withdrew the nominations of their candidates, thus making it the first instance where a mayor and a deputy mayor have been elected unopposed in the NMC. The mayoral post is reserved for a member from the Scheduled Tribes (ST) this time.
The Shiv Sena, which secured the second position in the NMC with 35 seats, did not field any candidates for the mayoral polls.
The deputy mayor, Mr. Gite, is the son of former MNS-turned BJP leader Vasant Gite, who was the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena’s mainstay in Nashik before he defected to the BJP in 2014.
