Pune corporation gets mayor after four years: BJP’s Manjusha Nagpure elected unopposed as Congress-NCP exit race

PUNE: The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) got a mayor and a deputy mayor on Monday after a gap of four years, with both posts being filled unopposed. BJP corporator Manjusha Nagpure was elected mayor, while Parshuram Wadekar was elected deputy mayor.

Both the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) withdrew from the mayoral elections on Monday, paving the way for the unopposed election. The BJP, the single largest party in the PMC, was expected to win both seats comfortably.


Nagpure, a corporator from the Sinhagad Road area, was the BJP’s mayoral candidate. NCP’s Sheetal Sawant and Congress’s Ashwini Landge had filed nominations against her but later withdrew.

The BJP allotted the deputy mayor’s post to its alliance partner, the Republican Party of India (RPI). Its candidate, Parshuram Wadekar, was set to contest against NCP’s Datta Bahirat and Congress nominee Sahil Kedari, who also withdrew.

At present, the BJP has 119 corporators in the 165-member PMC, followed by the NCP with 27, Congress with 15, NCP (SP) with three, and Shiv Sena (UBT) with one. The general body meeting was held at 11 am at the PMC headquarters in Shivajinagar.

The election of a new mayor ended the administrative rule in the PMC. The tenure of the previous mayor ended in February 2022, but in the absence of civic elections for four years, the post remained vacant.

“The elected members should conduct the mayoral election unopposed to pay homage to senior leaders Suresh Kalmadi and Ajit Pawar,” BJP leader and Leader of the House Ganesh Bidkar said while urging opposition parties to withdraw.

The reservation for the mayor’s post was declared last month. Pune, Nashik and Mumbai, along with six other municipal corporations in the state, now have women mayors from the general category.