BJP’s Secret Voting Among Office Bearers to Determine Candidates for Key Pune Constituencies

Pune, 1st October 2024: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has begun preparations for the upcoming Legislative Elections in Maharashtra, focusing on Pune city. MLC Pankaja Munde and Union Minister of State and Pune MP Murlidhar Mohol have conducted a preliminary assessment of the seats in the city. Following this, reports indicate that BJP officials plan to visit each constituency and conduct a vote among current and former office bearers to select candidates. This voting will be secret.

The office bearers participating in this vote must submit the names of three candidates in writing, ranked in order of preference from 1 to 3, without including their own names. The polling will be held for the Khadakwasla, Kothrud, Parvati, Shivajinagar, Kasba, and Cantonment constituencies. To prepare for the upcoming assembly elections, BJP’s Maharashtra election inspector, Chikkamagaravalli Thimme Gowda Ravi, held a meeting with key office bearers at the BJP’s Pune City Office today for a review.

This poll aims to gauge the preferences of the party’s chief office bearers and current and former representatives in each constituency for the upcoming assembly elections. Consequently, strong lobbying is underway among aspirants, who are contacting the office bearers. However, this voting process will not take place in the Hadapsar and Wadgaon Sheri constituencies, where the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), an ally in the Mahayuti, has MLAs. It is evident that these constituencies will be retained by Ajit Pawar’s NCP.

Moreover, as the Shiv Sena has also expressed interest in the Hadapsar constituency, there could be controversy surrounding these seats. If the BJP contests six seats and the NCP contests two, there will be no seats available for the Shiv Sena faction led by Eknath Shinde in Pune. Therefore, discussions are ongoing regarding the Shiv Sena’s insistence on this constituency to strengthen the party’s position.