Roller-coaster ride: The year in Pune politics

Pune, the cultural capital of Maharashtra, suffered a cultural shock in April, 2011, when the city MP Suresh Kalmadi was arrested for alleged corruption in the organisation of the Commonwealth Games (CWG) under his chairmanship.

For Pune, Kalmadi’s arrest was the biggest political quake of 2011. His arrest dampened the Ganpati festival and the Pune International Marathon — both of which lost their glamour quotient. After the defeat of the then Congress MP Vitthalrao Gadgil in 1991 Lok Sabha election, Kalmadi had emerged as the most powerful politician in the city which he ruled for two decades with an overwhelming influence in the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC).

Even today, his followers continue to dominate both the city unit of the Congress and the PMC — the most important power centre in the city. There is a struggle among some party leaders to occupy Kalmadi’s place, but they have not been successful yet.
Names of state forest minister Patangrao Kadam and co-operatives minister Harshwardhan Patil were considered by the party bosses, and ultimately they decided to go for a group leadership in the form of a co-ordination committee with members from all groups.

Chief minister Prithviraj Chavan has been visiting the city repeatedly to help the Congress party retain its support base.
Another local political development which reverberated at national level was the appointment of Vikas Mathkari as the city president of the Barratry Janet Party (BJP).

Mathkari, a follower of national president Nitin Gadkari, and Yogesh Gogawale, a follower of national general secretary Gopinath Munde, were in the race for the city chief’s post.
When the party leadership appointed Mathkari as the city president in May, the influential Munde faction revolted against the move. Gopinath Munde sulked for a long time and party’s topmost leader Lal Krishna Advani had to intervene to resolve the infighting.

Although Munde backtracked after Advani’s intervention, his followers in the city never accepted Mathkari as the city president. The divide was clear even during Advani’s visit to the city on November 3, 2011, as part of his nationwide Jan Chetna Rath Yatra.

But Mathkari’s leadership got an unexpected ratification when the low profile BJP candidate, Bhimrao Tapkir, defeated Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) candidate Harshada Wanjale in the Khadakwasla assembly by-election in October. The election was held due to the sudden demise of ‘golden man’ Ramesh Wanjale, who made a trademark of himself by wearing 2 kg of gold ornaments. Wanjale died on June 10 while undergoing treatment. He had got elected as Maharashtra Navnirman Sena candidate in 2009.

After his death, his wife Harshada, a zilla parishad member of the Congress, decided to join the NCP to contest the by-election. She had the sympathy of numerous voters, considering the popularity enjoyed by her husband.

NCP leader Ajit Pawar had made it a prestige issue to win the Khadakwasla seat, which is part of the Baramati Lok Sabha constituency represented by his cousin Supriya Sule.

The junior Pawar deployed all sorts of resources to win the election. The defeat of Wanjale with a slender margin of 3,625 votes came as a shock to him.

But by the end of the year Pawar got consolation when his party won the Talegaon Municipal Council election by defeating BJP. The success in this small town was important in the view of firing on agitating farmers in Maval near Talegaon on August 9. Three farmers died in the firing by the police and the issue became a great embarrassment for the ruling party.

The year is ending on a busy note, as the city’s political scene is abuzz with activities in the backdrop of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) elections to be held in February 2012. The results of these polls are bound to define the political terrain of 2012 and its implications for the city.