PUNE: After facing defeat in the recently held Lok Sabha polls, the Congress is struggling to get back on the track. The party is struggling to get aspirants ahead of upcoming State Assembly polls in the city. Out of eight constituency in the city area, the party has failed to get response from aspirants willing to contest election from four assembly constituencies.
Till date, the party has received only 22 applications. Now, the party has announced extension of its deadline by eight more days. The local leaders are hoping that several aspirants will file application forms after extension. The party leaders have earlier stated that since many aspirants are on their annual pilgrimage to Pandharpur or Wari, interested candidates will apply only after Friday.
Ahead of State Assembly polls, the Congress Party had appealed to aspirants to submit application to Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC). The last date of submission was July 6, 2019. However, due to poor response, the deadline was extended by eight days.
City Congress Chief Ramesh Bagwe told Sakal Times, “The committee has extended the date to file applications. Most of the people are participating in Wari. Therefore, they claimed that they were unable to submit forms as per our schedule. We hope there will be more applications in coming eight days.”
He further said, “We have got poor response in Wadgaon Sheri, Kothrud, Khadakwasla and Hadapsar constituencies. We got good response from Shivajinagar, Kasba, Parvati and Pune Cantonment as the party has a stronghold there. Aspirants will file applications for all seats in Pune district.”
In 2009, NCP had contested assembly election from Parvati, Wadgaon Sheri, Khadakwasla and Kothrud and the party won Wadgaon Sheri seat. Therefore, the Congress has decided not to stake claim on these four seats.
In 2014, both parties contested election separately and they lost all seats. Though, the Congress is anticipating alliance with NCP, there has been no official announcement regarding alliance from both parties yet.
PROMINENT ASPIRANTS
- Wadgaon Sheri - Vikas Tingre, Ramesh Sakat, Dnyaneshwar Moze
- Parvati - Aba Bagul, Sachin Taware
- Kasba - Arvind Shinde, Ravindra Dhangekar, Virendra Kirad, Milind Kachi, Mukhtar Sheikh, Vinay Dhere
- Shivajinagar - Datta Bhairat, Dipti Choudhary, Mukari Algude, Dnyaneshwar Moze, Kailas Gaikwad
- Pune Cantonment - Ramesh Bagwe, Avinash Bagwe, Ravindra Arade, Mukesh Dhiwar, Karansingh Makwana, Lata Rajguru
- Kothrud - Vijay Khaladkar
- Hadapsar - Balasaheb Shivarkar, Prashant Tupe, Shivaji Kedari
