Nagpur: With the Supreme Court directing the State Election Commission (SEC) to announce Municipal and Zilla Parishad elections within two weeks, all political parties have gone on poll mode. Major parties claimed they were prepared for the local body polls.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Congress have convened meetings to chalk out strategy for the civic elections.
Former Chief Minister and Leader of Opposition in State Assembly Devendra Fadnavis, MLC Chandrashekhar Bawankule, MLA Krishna Khopde criticised the MVA Government for not putting the case of OBC in Supreme Court aggressively. The leaders alleged that the sluggishness on the part of the State has deprived OBC people from getting reservation in the upcoming polls.
Fadnavis said, he has not gone through the judgment but as per the primary information, the Administrator-ruled NMC cannot function for more than 6 months due to which holding elections becomes necessary. “This is a failure of Maha Vikas Aghadi. Delay in tactics applied by the State Government led to the judgment. The court has not cancelled the new Act, but has used terse words against the working style of the State Government. The OBC community has to suffer a lot because of the State Government’s careless approach as MVA has never put the side of the community in a right way,” said Fadnavis.
President of Nagpur City Congress Vikas Thakre, said, “We respect the Court’s decision and we have already started our preparations to face the polls. BJP has exposed itself by not doing anything in the last 15 years. Public will ask the BJP what had it done to this city. We are trying to find the areas we fell short in last elections. We are working on our weaknesses and building our strengths.”
In the wake of the Supreme Court decision, President of NCP city unit Duneshwar Pethe convened a meeting of all heads of the party of six Assembly constituencies. Some Zonal heads, too, were invited. Pethe interacted with them to chalk out the plan for the civic body polls. “I have asked all the zonal presidents to get the list of people interested to contest Nagpur Municipal Corporation polls. As per the instructions from our senior leaders we are preparing to win more seats. The system of three Prabhags has almost been finalized which is acceptable to us,” explained Pethe.
Dushyant Chaturvedi, Contact chief of Shiv Sena in Nagpur, said, “Our leaders are monitoring the situation. Sanjay Raut had been to Nagpur. Accordingly, we have started our preparations to face the polls. Early polls are always good and we have no issue with regards to the prabhag system too.”
Welcoming the verdict of the Supreme Court, Bawankule, too, slammed the State Government for betraying the OBC community.“Lawyers of State Government could not put the side of OBC, the way they should have been. On December 13, 2019 Supreme Court had asked the Government to hold a triple test of the OBC report. But MVA has not taken it seriously. The Supreme Court had again given a reminder to the State Government on March 4, 2021, but the Government completely ignored it. Had the Government conducted a triple test of the report, injustice would not have been made on the OBC community,” alleged Bawankule.
