The NCP and NCP (SP), which had raised the decibel level during the election campaign, forged a pre-poll alliance but managed to win only 30 and 3 seats respectively, while the Congress managed to win 15 seats and the Shiv Sena (UBT) won one seat through their alliance. He Eknath ShindeParty-led Shiv Sena and MNS failed to register victory in a single seat.

The BJP won the PMC elections for the second consecutive time, securing the majority on its own. In fact, its strength in the civic body has increased from its previous spectacle of 97 seats in 2017, when it displaced power from the PNC-Congress alliance.

The saffron party had done well in the city since 2014, winning every Lok Sabha election since then. It also repeated the same performance in the Assembly elections by winning all eight seats in 2014, six seats each in 2019 and 2024.

“The BJP was confident of victory thanks to the development work carried out in Pune with the help of the Union government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Chief Minister. Devendra Fadnavis-State government led. There was a metro that started operating during the BJP government and the mega river improvement and development project was carried out,” Union minister and Pune MP Murlidhar Mohol said after the victory.

“People of Pune are not fooled by wrong statements of the opposition,” he said, adding, “Whatever may happen and who may pose a challenge, the citizens of Pune will always support the BJP.”

The Ajit Pawar-led NCP forged a pre-poll alliance with the Sharad Pawar-led NCP (SP) in a bid to pose a formidable challenge to the BJP in the PMC, but failed to make a dent. The united NCP had won 39 seats in 2017 but could not maintain that strength despite an aggressive election campaign led by deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar.

“We accepted the public mandate and accepted the result. We will again work hard to win the hearts of the public in the seats we lost. My congratulations to all those who won the elections,” Ajit Pawar said reacting to the municipal corporation election results.

The NCP also bites the dust in Pimpri-Chinchwad

Despite NCP national president Ajit Pawar’s aggressive campaign, the BJP emerged victorious in Pimpri-Chinchwad on Friday with another clear majority as 84 of its candidates won in the civic polls. This is the second time since the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation came into existence in 1986, the BJP has ascended the PCMC throne.

The NCP campaign was led by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar. He campaigned aggressively against the BJP government for five years, mainly targeting BJP MLA Mahesh Landge. Pawar alleged that there was massive corruption in PCMC during the BJP government and Landge had spearheaded that corruption. Pawar said the NCP wanted to kill the demon of corruption and restore the glory of the industrial city.

To capture the PCMC, which his party had ruled for over two decades, Ajit Pawar even forged an alliance with the Sharad Pawar-led NCP. NCP (SP) MLA Rohit Pawar and party MP Amol Kolhe also campaigned for the candidates of the two parties. At every press conference and rally, Ajit Pawar launched verbal attacks on the BJP and promised voters that he would stop the looting of taxpayers’ money.

However, nothing worked as both PNCs won the same number of seats as the undivided PNC had won in 2017.

While Ajit Pawar fired salvos at the BJP, the latter initially refused to engage in a verbal duel with him. However, Landge then challenged Ajit Pawar to provide evidence on the corruption allegations. He responded by saying that Ajit Pawar and his party did little to boost the development of Pimpri-Chinchwad. “The real development of Pimpri-Chinchwad came only after the BJP came to power,” he said.

Reacting to the spectacular performance of the party, BJP Pimpri-Chinchwad unit chief Shatrughan Kate told The indian express“I said we would win 80 seats. However, voters believed my predictions. They gave us more seats than we expected. This only reflects voters’ confidence in our ability to drive the development of Pimpri-Chinchwad. Our teamwork and meticulous planning worked in our favour.”

Stating that they fought the elections only on the issue of development, Kate said, “Our campaign focused solely on the issue of development. This is because our five-year tenure only saw a lot of development. We brought new projects and started the stalled projects. Under the able leadership of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, we were able to get sanctions for projects that were stalled by our opponents during his tenure. People saw how we fought for their welfare and the development of the city. And hence, this vote of the citizens are for our development.”

Raju Durge, district general secretary, said, “We were sure that we would achieve a big victory and we are happy that it has finally happened. I will attribute this victory to the entire BJP grassroots, our local leadership and our state leadership.”

Durge said voters were not victims of any narrative pushed by some parties. “People gave preference to the BJP because of the way we implemented development projects. Be it the Pune Metro project, the 12.5 per cent return on acquired land, the decision to scrap penal tax, setting up of a police commission and a judicial building, all this development happened during the BJP government. We pushed this development at a faster pace. People liked what we did and they voted for us in droves,” he said.

Durge said Fadnavis only held a solitary rally in Pimpri-Chinchwad. “At the rally he guided us on how to approach the elections. And we should only highlight the development agenda,” he said.

Yogesh Behl, president of the NCP’s Pimpri-Chinchwad unit, said, “We expected 50 of our candidates to win. The result is below our expectations. We will have to analyze what went wrong. We expected a better result than this. Our national president Ajit Pawar had run our campaign aggressively. The voters had responded to it and hence we will have to analyze where we fell short.”