Direct Fight Between BJP & Congress On THESE Three Assembly Seats In Pune City

Out of eight Assembly constituencies in Pune City, there is a direct fight between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress on three seats — Kasba Peth, Shivajinagar and Pune Cantonment.

In Kasba Peth, it is going to be a repeat of the 2022 bypoll as Congress's incumbent MLA Ravindra Dhangekar will face BJP's Hemant Rasane. BJP Pune City Chief Dheeraj Ghate has expressed his discontent as the saffron party did not nominate him. Kunal Tilak, whose late mother Mukta Tilak was an MLA of Kasba Peth, was also in the running for this seat from the BJP.

BJP's sitting MLA Siddharth Shirole will once again face Congress's Datta Bahirat in the Shivajinagar Assembly constituency. In the 2019 Assembly elections, Bahirat lost to Shirole by a narrow margin of 5,200 votes. The Shivajinagar constituency had around 12 aspirants, including Manish Anand and Sunny Nimhan from the Congress. Nimhan, a former BJP corporator and son of ex-MLA Vinayak Nimhan, was keen on a ticket from Shivajinagar.

Congress has fielded party loyalist and former minister of state for home Ramesh Bagwe from the Pune Cantonment Assembly seat. He will face sitting MLA Sunil Kamble of the BJP. Pune Cantonment has been considered favourable to Congress for several decades. Bagwe was elected in 2004 and 2009. In 2014, the BJP changed the trend, defeating Bagwe first with Dilip Kamble and later with his brother Sunil Kamble in 2019. Reserved for Scheduled Caste candidates, the constituency has 2.9 lakh voters.