Fadnavis

Bharatiya Janata Party

BJP

Tilak Road

Yogesh Gogawale

Girish Bapat

Parliament

Anil Shirole

Sanjay Kakade

Pune Mirror

Gogawale

Manish Ghate

Dilip Kalokha

Legislative Assembly

Vandana Chavan

Shiv Sena

Uddhav Thackeray

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena

Raj Thackeray

Empty chairs greetHe came, he saw, but there was no crowd to conquer. Chief minister Devendra, the star campaigner for the) this civic polls, visited the city on Saturday to address a public meeting in thearea. But, much to the embarrassment of the party workers, he had to leave the venue as there weren’t enough people present to hear his campaign speech.After 15 minutes of patient wait at the corner of the stage in the hope of more footfall, Fadnavis realised it was a futile exercise as most of the chairs for the audience were still empty. He then tweeted, “I have cancelled my public meeting at Pune due to miscommunication of time of rally. I regret for the same. Heading towards Pimpri-Chinchwad.”The meeting was scheduled in the New English School ground at 2 in the afternoon. BJP’s city unit chiefand district guardian ministerwere also present on stage and somehow presided over the meeting, joined by Member of(MP). It was wrapped up in an hour with a sparse crowd of 100; some of the people gathered were standing under the trees, others were shielding themselves from the sun with BJP flags.It is curious that the party got such a lukewarm response from a city it is claiming to get the majority of seats from. MPclaimed, “There are 21 wards where we will win and we have categorised them as ‘A’ plus. In 11wards, we will face stiff competition while in the remaining ones, we have to take special efforts to win. Our second team has started working on it.” Clearly, the BJP city unit cannot afford to suffer from lack of communication then.Speaking toabout the miscommunication,said, “We arranged for the public rally on Saturday at 2 pm. But, we failed to convey the message to party workers. Besides, an afternoon meeting seldom gathers much of a crowd.”, a sitting corporator and senior member of the party under whose jurisdiction the ward where the meeting took place is, contended, “We received the message late on Friday night. So, it was impossible to convey it to all the party workers. Besides, there is only one day left for the election campaign. We have a lot on our hands — meeting people, distributing voter slips et al. It was not possible to be present at the meeting.”, another sitting corporator from the same area, was annoyed by Mirror’s queries about the meagre footfall. “I don’t want to comment on this. It is better to ask Gogawale. He will be able to inform better on this,” he said. One of the aspirants from the party added on condition of anonymity, “The BJP city unit is not considering other party members. They are taking decisions on their own accord. Such mismanagement is the result of this. I feel very bad that the CM had to leave without addressing the meeting. What kind of message does it send across to the city? We have six members of(MLAs) and one MP from BJP here, but still they cannot assemble a decent crowd for campaigning. The opposition parties have started to take mileage. It will certainly affect party performance.”And, sure enough, this debacle was aready weapon for the opposition parties, with Nationalist Congress Party’s (NCP) city unit chiefsaying, “This is the reaction of voters to the BJP for the Pune corporation election.” Two other rallies were organised at the same place — one conducted bychiefand the other by(MNS) chief— and garnered a good response. Both were scheduled in the evening.