PUNE: The new mayor and deputy mayor of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) will be elected after a gap of four years on Monday, following a triangular contest in the recently concluded civic polls.The BJP is the single largest party and is likely to win the posts comfortably.
Corporator from the Sinhagad Road area Manjusha Nagpure is the party’s mayoral candidate. Sheetal Sawant from the NCP and Congress’s Ashwini Landge are in the contest against her.Meanwhile, the BJP has given the deputy mayor’s nomination to its alliance partner, the Republican Party of India candidate Parshuram Wadekar. He will take on NCP’s Datta Bahirat and Congress nominee Sahil Kedari.Currently, the BJP has 119 corporators, NCP has 27, Congress 15 and NCP (SP) has three. The general body meeting of the 165 elected members will be held at 11am at the PMC’s headquarters in Shivajinagar.The new mayor will end the administrative rule in PMC. The tenure of the previous mayor had concluded in Feb 2022. Although a new mayor was supposed to take charge soon after, the post remained vacant in the absence of civic elections for four years.BJP’s city unit chief Dheeraj Ghate said, “It is clear that a mayor from our party will take charge. The decision to choose the candidate was taken after due discussions with senior party leaders at the local and state levels.”The NCP, which is in power at the state govt with BJP, is an opponent in PMC. There were talks that NCP would pave the way for BJP candidates by withdrawing from the race.NCP’s leader of party in PMC Nilesh Nikam said, “Our party will finalise the poll strategy and act upon it accordingly.”It was last month when the reservations for the mayor’s post were declared. Pune, Nashik and Mumbai, along with six other municipal corporations in the state, will have a woman mayor from the general category.
