Three Shiv Sena corporators have rebelled against nomination of district president Shekhar Sawarbandhe for the post of deputy mayor in
Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) and have filed nominations against the party whip.
The election for the post of mayor and deputy mayor will be held on December 23. Withdrawal and scrutiny of nominations will take place before the election in Town Hall. The candidate will be elected by open voting.
Sena sources said that party observer for the mayoral polls Chhotu Desai arrived on Saturday morning with a letter
from executive president Uddhav Thackeray. The letter stated that Sawarbandhe was the party candidate for
deputy mayor’s post while Ganesh Doifode would be the Shiv Sena party leader in NMC.
However, this enraged three Sena corporators — Suresh ‘Bandu’ Talwekar, Alka Dalal and Ganesh Doifode — and they proceeded to file nominations. Sources further said that Talwekar had been promised deputy mayor’s post by Sena top bosses months ago. However, Uddhav offered deputy mayor’s post to Sawarbandhe as a compensation when he was denied the assembly ticket from South Nagpur. Sawarbandhe accepted the offer and withdrew from the fray.
The three rebel Sena corporators are being backed by Independents in Congress camp and MNS. Vikas Khobragade (MNS) is the proposer for Talwekar while Kamlesh Chaudhari (Ind-Cong) is seconder. Alka Dalal’s proposer is Yogesh Gonnade of Adim Sangh while seconder is Ajay Buggewar (Ind-Cong). Ganesh Doifode’s proposer and seconder are Manoj Sable (Ind-Cong) and Mama Dhote (MNS) respectively.
In spite of the rebellion, there is little chance of Sawarbandhe losing the election. The BJP, Sena and their allies have a strength of 75 in a house of 136. Even if three corporators switch sides the saffron strength will be reduced to 72 against a requirement of 69. To complicate things for the rebels, two NCP corporators Mohammed Kamil Ansari and Rajesh Mate are also in the fray for deputy mayor’s post. The rebels also face the threat of disqualification. Meanwhile, Archana Dehankar of BJP is all set to become the next mayor. BJP has fielded only one candidate for the post which is reserved for women. Three Congress corporators Meena Barde, Kalpana Dawre and Rajni Barde and NCP’s Pushpa Malikar are also in the fray. BJP sources said that there were two front-runners for the mayor’s post — Kalpana Pande and Archana Dehankar. There is strong possibility that Dehankar will resign after an year and Kalpana Pande will take over for the remaining term.