PUNE, Dec 4: The forthcoming elections to the post of Pune Municipal Transport (PMT) chairman on December 11 has goaded the ruling alliance of the Pune Vikas Aghadi (PVA), the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena in the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) into hectic political activity, with bargaining for elected positions of the Mayor, Deputy Mayor and standing committee chairman likely to dominate the crucial meeting called by PVA leader Suresh Kalmadi on Saturday.Kalmadi is expected to handpick one of the several aspirants from the PVA contending for the PMT chairman's post at tomorrow's meeting. It will be attended by Girish Bapat, MLA, Pradeep Rawat, BJP city chief among others. However, the meeting also assumes significance as the BJP members would prefer to decide on the distribution of the remaining elected posts among the PVA, BJP and SS. Last year was the first time when the Kalmadi-backed faction in the PMC bagged majority of the posts including that of Mayor, School Board chairman and PMT chairman.The post of the Deputy Mayor had been allotted to the BJP candidate while the Sena candidate had been elected for the Standing Committee chairman's post. Elections to the PMT chairman's post has been necessitated with the term of the present chairman Shyam Mankar ending on December 11. Polls to the School Board chairman will follow a month later while the elections to the post of standing committee chairman is scheduled in March next year. The next mayor will be elected on March 20. Of the 13-member PMT committee, six seats belong to the PVA,3 to Congress and 2 with BJP and Shiv Sena each. The aspirants for the PMT chairman's post from PVA include Sambhaji Naik, Prakash Lodha and Wilson Massey and BJP member Shrikant Bhadke.
