One water tank but two inaugurations: Congress, BJP leaders engage in clamour for credit in Pune; chief guest Ajit Pawar skips event

However, BJP legislator Siddharth Shirole took the initiative to get the project inaugurated and managed to get the Pune Municipal Corporation to hold an inauguration function on Friday. Shirole also invited Pune Guardian Minister and Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar to be the chief guest at the event.

However, amid a clamour to claim credit between Congress and the BJP, Pawar stayed away from the inauguration ceremony.

Apart from initiating the process, Bahirat had managed to get the required land for the tank from a housing society free of cost for the PMC and had even got the civic body to earmark funds to start the work.

In 2022, Congress leader Ulhas Bagul got a resolution passed in the civic general body to get the water tank inaugurated in presence of Congress leader Balasaheb Thorat, NCP leader Ajit Pawar and BJP leader Chandrakant Patil.

For the last few months, Bahirat had been urging the civic administration to inaugurate the project as decided in the civic general body as the construction work was complete some time back.

However, although the inauguration ceremony was planned, Shirole did not invite Thorat and Bahirat for the function. This evoked opposition from Bahirat.

Bahirat said, “The BJP legislator is taking credit for the project and has deliberately made the PMC not follow the resolution for inaugurating the project.” Bahirat had lost to Shirole in the 2019 Assembly election by a narrow margin of votes.

Now, he and Congress legislator Ravindra Dhangekar along with party leader Mohan Joshi have urged the PMC to cancel the inauguration and do it again by inviting Congress leaders. But even that demand came only after the Congress leaders unofficially inaugurated the water tank despite the police trying to stop them.

There was a tense situation in the area after the Congress leaders got aggressive with their demand.

Later, Shirole and Mayor Murlidhar Mohol officially inaugurated the water tank when Pawar did not turn up for the ceremony.

In his defence, Shirole said a former corporator cannot be invited as per protocols. “I accept that the project was initiated by Bahirat during his tenure but he has not been a corporator for the last seven years and the follow up of the project was done by me and the other BJP corporators before me. I had got various issues resolved that were needed for the effective use of the water tank,” he said.

“Moreover, completed projects are inaugurated by ruling parties and not the Opposition,” Shirole added.

Meanwhile, NCP leaders of the Ajit Pawar faction said that it was possible that the Deputy Chief Minister deliberately stayed away from the function marred with controversy.

“We don’t know the exact reason for the Deputy Chief Minister to stay away from the civic function but he cancelled all the scheduled functions in the city after hoisting the national flag on the occasion of the Republic Day in Pune,” an NCP leader said, adding that Pawar might have left for Mumbai to resolve the situation arising due to the rally by Manoj Jarange Patil to demand reservation for the entire Maratha community.