BASTION BREACHED

The Kasba Peth win gives hope to the Maha Vikas Aghadi that, in a direct fight, it can defeat the BJP-Shinde alliance

- DNYANESH JATHAR

A week before the assembly byelection in Kasba Peth, Pune, senior BJP Minister Chandrakant Patil was asked whether Ravindra Dhangekar of the Congress would be a formidable opponent. “Who is Dhangekar?” he shot back.

On March 2, Dhangekar beat BJP man Hemant Rasane by around 11,000 votes.

Sure, the BJP defeated the Nationalist Congress Party to retain Chinchwad, but that was a pyrrhic victory. Kasba Peth had been a BJP bastion for close to three decades and it also houses the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s Maharashtra headquarters.

The by-election was necessitated by the death of Mukta Tilak, the sitting BJP MLA. The great granddaughter-in-law of freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mukta had trounced her Congress-NCP opponent in the 2019 elections.

Interestingly, Dhangekar had approached the state BJP leadership for a ticket ahead of the election. A four-term corporator in the Pune Municipal Corporation, Dhangekar was earlier with Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. He joined the Congress only in 2017.

A down-to-earth leader with a ‘can do’ spirit, Dhangekar moves around Pune on a two-wheeler and keeps his office open to the public from 8am to midnight. He spends close to 10 hours a day listening to people, calling up municipal authorities to solve their problems and simply chatting with his supporters.