BJP sounds bugle for local body polls
BJP aims to win 13,000 seats in Maharashtra local polls, reinforcing alliance with Shiv Sena and NCP, while appointing Ravindra Chavan as new state executive president.
SHIRDI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has sounded the bugle for elections to local self-government bodies across the state. Riding high after its landslide victory in the recent assembly elections, the party said it aims to win maximum of 13,000 seats in the upcoming polls to 960 local bodies in Maharashtra.

“Party workers slogged in the Lok Sabha and assembly elections, which were elections of the leaders. Now it’s time for the leaders to work hard for the workers in local body polls, which are considered polls of the workers,” said BJP state chief, Chandrashekhar Bawankule, at media conference on day one of the party’s two-day convention being held in Shirdi, on Saturday and Sunday.
On day one, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis chaired a meeting of MPs, MLAs, office-bearers and leaders of frontal organisations. The second day will include three sessions, during which the big guns, including Union home minister Amit Shah, Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari and state chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, will address the convention.
To be attended by 15,000 BJP workers, the meet will also see the party resolving to enroll 1.51 crore people as party workers. Party leaders will also thank the people of Maharashtra for its thumping majority in the assembly elections two months ago. The BJP’s plan is to strengthen the party at local level by enrolling new members, fixing responsibilities of office-bearers and shoring its presence through booth-level committees.
Bawankule said the local body elections will be fought as an alliance of the three ruling parties, the BJP, Shiv Sena and NCP. “The people of Maharashtra gave us a huge mandate in the assembly polls. The verdict has not gone to our head, to go alone in the local body polls. We will fight as an alliance and win,” he said.
On Shiv Sena (UBT) leaders lavishing praise on BJP leaders, Bawankule said that Uddhav Thackeray must have realised that his betrayal in 2019 had distanced his party from the Hindutva ideology. “He must have realised that continuing the alliance with the Congress had cost them dear,” he said.
Bawankule said that Maharashtra Navnirman Sangh (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray was supporting the Mahayuti alliance but a decision on whether or not to team up with Thackeray will be taken by the Mumbai unit of the party.
Ravindra Chavan is executive president of BJP’s state unit
SHIRDI: The BJP on Saturday appointed Ravindra Chavan as executive president of the Maharashtra unit of the party. Chavan, MLA from Dombivali, is likely to be formally elevated to the post of the party’s state president once the process of appointment of office-bearers at the tehsil and district levels is completed in the next three months.
Chavan’s appointment is seen as a setback to the incumbent state BJP chief, Chandrakant Bawankule. “The party leadership wanted a full-time president at least three months ahead of the local body polls, which are seen as mini-assembly polls. Bawankule is shouldering an important portfolio in the cabinet, and it would not have possible for him to do justice with an organisational post,” a senior BJP leader said.
“The appointment of the state chief of the party will be done in the next two months once the elections of block- and district-level heads are completed,” said Bawankule, who was appointed Maharashtra BJP chief in August 2022.
According to a BJP leader, “It was cleared that Chavan would be Bawankule’s successor when latter was inducted into the state cabinet as revenue minister and the former was excluded from the cabinet last month. Chavan’s appointment is also important in light of the upcoming local body polls.”

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