Pune: The erstwhile Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) government’s legislation in 2011, which increased reservation for women to 50% in civic bodies, has prompted political parties to field mothers, wives, and sisters of candidates to fill the quota ahead of the Pune civic polls on February 21.
For the Bharatiya Janata Party juggernaut, which threatens to overrun most parties in the civic polls, giving tickets to women candidates serves to stop the spate of defections from parties like the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), and, to a lesser extent, the NCP.
The MNS’s husband-wife duo, Rajendra and Vanita Wagaskar, have been given tickets with the hope that they repeat their 2012 civic poll win. The party has weakened after the exit of their top leaders Prakash Dhore and Ravindra Dhangekar. It has fielded five couples in a bid to stay in the reckoning.
The NCP, which is facing similar issues in its bastion in Pimpri-Chinchwad after defection of its heavyweight leaders, has resorted to awarding tickets to party loyalists and, in some cases, to their kin. The party is of the opinion that the exit of renegades has helped in weeding out unreliable elements within the NCP. However, it is reeling from the exit of legislator Mahesh Landge; Yashwant Bhosale, and Azam Pansare in the Pimpri-Chichwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) area, and more recently, that of sitting corporator Reshma Bhosale (wife of NCP legislator Anil Bhosale) in the Pune Municipal Corporation area (PMC).
The NCP has fielded Ratnaprabha Jagtap, the mother of present PMC mayor and senior NCP leader Prashant Jagtap, and has given tickets to the brother-sister duo Priya and Premraj Gadade. Ms. Gadade was a former MNS notable who shifted allegiances to join the NCP.
The party also gave three tickets to the kin of former NCP legislator Bapu Pathare; his wife Sanjita, his nephew Mahendra, and his sister-in-law Suman, all jumping into the fray.
Despite the BJP claiming the moral high ground and shunning ‘dynastic politics’, nepotism is evident in its selection of candidates.
Former NCP legislator Laxman Jagtap, now a prized asset for the BJP, was influential in fielding his brother Rajendra Jagtap from the city’s Pimple-Gurav area.
The Sena, too, is not far behind in this family soap-opera. The party has fielded Nilesh Barne, the nephew of Sena MP Shrirang Barne, from the Thergaon area. According to sources, the MP played a decisive role in the selection of candidates.
