NCP gets 52 applications for Pune’s 8 seats

Pune: Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has received a total of 52 applications from aspirants for the city’s eight State Assembly polls. The party had given a deadline of July for submission of the nomination forms. 

The party has also considered the option of going 'solo' as they appealed to aspirants to file nomination for total 288 seats. 

It is expected that the State Assembly elections will be held in October this year. The State has 288 Assembly constituencies. 

Hadapsar, Khadakwasla, Wadgaon Sheri and Parvati are NCp strongholds. 

There are 13 aspirants for the Assembly seats, in which eight are Nationalist Congress Party's sitting corporators, including former mayors Vaishali Bankar and Prashant Jagtap. 

During Congress-NCP alliance in 2009, the NCP had contested Assembly elections from Parvati, Wadgaon Sheri, Khadakwasla and Kothrud and it had won the Wadgaon Sheri seat. In 2014, both parties contested election separately and they lost all seats. There is no official announcement of alliance from both the parties yet. 

Nationalist Congress Party City President Chetan Tupe said, “It is true that there is no alliance between Congress and NCP. But, every party will follow the same procedure before any election. Hence, we have collected nominations from all 288 seats. The party will see constituency-wise strength and names of strong aspirants. Based on that, 
the party will take a final call on the seats. In 2009, NCP contested seats of Kothrud, Parvati, Wadgaon Sheri and Khadakwasla. This time, we will demand seats where we have strong candidates.” 

NCP does not have have stronghold in Kothrud. Despite that, it has received applications from eight aspirants from Kothrud. Khadakwasla is in the third position for receiving maximum applications of aspirants. There are seven aspirants, including former mayor and sitting corporators Datta Dhanakwade following by corporators Dilip Barate, Sachin Dodke and Rupali Chakankar. 

Supriya Sule has been elected as MP from Baramati Lok Sabha constituency and Kothrud and Khadakwasla is part of Baramati. Therefore, the party leaders have shown interest in Khadakwasla Assembly constituency.

There are six aspirants from Kasba and Parvati constituency. In Parvati, senior corporator Subhas Jagtap's name has not appeared in the list. He is considered as a strong candidate from Nationalist Congress Party. Corporator Ashwini Kadam and her husband Nitin Kadam have filed nomination from Parvati. 

From Wadgaon Sheri constituency, there are five aspirants, including former MLA Bapu Pathare and sitting corporator Sunil Tingre and Satish Maske. Pathare is the only former MLA among eight constituencies as an aspirant. 

Nationalist Congress Party got the least response from Shivajinagar and Pune Cantonment constituency. It received three and four nomination forms from Pune Cantonment and Shivajinagar respectively. 

In the previous Assembly elections, held in 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 122 and emerged as the largest single party in the State and its ally, Shiv Sena, won another 63 seats.

The BJP-Shiv sena alliance formed the State government. 

Congress had bagged 42 seats, while the NCP won 41 seats. 

The other parties and independent candidates won 20 seats in the State Assembly. The Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance had departed and separately contested State Assembly polls in 2014.