Pune: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) three-time corporator Seema Savle has been nominated as chief of the standing committee of the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC).
The BJP won a massive landslide in the PCMC, bagging 77 of the 128 seats. The party also broke the decade-long hold of Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) over the civic body.
Ms. Savle, from the PCMC’s Indrayani Nagar area, is expected to win the election unopposed as no other candidate has filed a nomination.
The elections are to be held on Friday. Ms. Savle, who was earlier with the Shiv Sena, joined the BJP just before the recent civic elections.
Sarang Kamtekar, BJP’s general secretary, said, “during the NCP’s long reign over the PCMC, only upper class women made it to the powerful post of panel chief.”
Ms. Savle won by a narrow margin in the 2007 civic polls from a reserved seat. However, in the 2012 PCMC election, she won by 1,000 votes from an open category seat.
She also withstood the NCP wave in the 2012 PCMC polls, in which the party bagged 83 seats, defeating the Sena and the BJP.
It is believed that former NCP heavyweight-turned-BJP MLA Laxman Jagtap chose Ms. Savle for the post of PCMC’s standing committee chief.
There was disgruntlement within the BJP camp over new PCMC mayor Nitin Kalje’s candidature, as he is widely perceived to be Mr. Landge’s pick.
The mayor’s post has been reserved for an OBC candidate for the first two-and-a-half years in the civic body this time.
The NCP won only 36 seats in the PCMC, following the steady defections of their top leaders in the area, like Mr. Landge and Azam Pansare, who joined the BJP before the polls.
