Barely six months after being appointed as the BJP’s Mumbai unit president, developer Mangal Prabhat Lodha is likely to be replaced. According to party sources, Mr. Lodha’s performance has come under a cloud over the past three months. The leadership is also believed to have received complaints against his style of functioning.
The high profile MLA from Malabar Hill was appointed the city unit chief in July, 2019, replacing Bandra MLA and senior leader Ashish Shelar. With an estimated net worth of over ₹30,000 crore between him and his company Macrotech Developers (formerly Lodha Group), Mr. Lodha is among the most successful developers in the country.
Among those who are being tipped to replace Mr. Lodha are Atul Bhatkhalkar (MLA from Kandivali) and Parag Alavani (Vile Parle MLA). Both have a reputation of being approachable and accessible while they have been found actively giving time to party workers, party sources said.
“It is more an issue of finding time for Mr. Lodha rather than his style of functioning. He is just too busy to dedicate himself full time to the party. The high command is aware that under his leadership we won more than 80% seats in the Assembly elections. So this is certainly not about performance alone,” said a BJP leader.
After being appointed city chief, Mr. Lodha had set for the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance a target of winning all 36 Assembly seats in Mumbai.
Mr. Lodha had also set the tone of the campaign by raising issues of nationalism and identity politics with regards to illegal immigrants in the city. He was subsequently served a show cause notice by the Election Commission (EC) for his remarks during a rally at Mumbadevi in which he had claimed explosives for the 1991 Mumbai blasts were manufactured in the bylanes dotted with minority homes.
