Just ahead of the counting day of assembly election in 5 states, there is good news for the BJP coming from the civic body election in Maharashtra. Civic body elections were conducted in Dhule and Ahmednagar corporations consisting of 74 and 68 members respectively on Sunday. Today, after the final count in Dhule, BJP won an almost two-thirds majority by grabbing 44 seats. In Ahmednagar though, they were restricted to 18 seats as the votes seem to have split between BJP and Shiv Sena.
These civic bodies election saw a record voter turnout percentage of 67% in Ahmednagar & 60% in Dhule on Sunday. The counting started for both the corporation at around 10 am today. Both the cities, Dhule and Ahmednagar are prominent cities of north Maharashtra. “Election for one seat (in Dhule) was unanimous hence voting was not held,” said State Election Commissioner JS Saharia.
What shocked the most is the outcome of Dhule, where BJP was at number four in the last civic body elections. This time, they ended up winning two-thirds of the seats. This shows the organizational skills of both the party and the Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.
Since 2014, when Fadnavis was appointed as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, the state saw a new dawn of development. Fadnavis is known for his strength of character, his sharpness of mind and his great organizational skills. Besides being farsighted and firm in his approach, he is extremely humble in his dealings. Fadnavis has proposed several out of the box solutions to tackle decade old problems. For example, his Jalyukta Shivar Scheme has done wonders to solve the problem of drought in the state. According to the data by the state government, in four months of this summer, only 152 tankers of water were needed in 12,000 villages that became water reliant. The ‘Make in Maharashtra’ initiative led to billions of dollars of investments in the state from major companies like Foxconn and Virgin Group. The work in the Mumbai Metro is happening at a fast pace in the western line and the central line, as Fadnavis looks to modernize Maharashtra and project it into the future.
He is also working in close contact with the CEO of Virgin Hyperloop One, in order to implement it as a transport alternative between Pune and Mumbai. The idea for hyperloop transportation in India was proposed by Virgin Group chairman Richard Branson in the Magnetic Maharashtra Summit earlier this year. According to a statement released by the CM’s office, “The Government of Maharashtra is exploring this transportation technology (Hyperloop) for the Mumbai-Pune route with an aim to reduce the travel time between them to just 25 minutes. Virgin Hyperloop One will soon be sending its engineers to Pune to conduct a study; The Pune Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (PMRDA) has identified a 15-km long demonstration track for Hyperloop. If things go as per plan then the Hyperloop between Mumbai-Pune will be ready by 2024”.
Devendra Fadnavis was one of the primary campaigners in assembly election of Maharashtra in 2014. At that time of the elections, BJP was in the fourth place in the state. He was given a tough task of organizing the cadre again and strengthening the base of the party. He did a stellar job by securing the single largest party status for the BJP, and forming the government with Shiv Sena’s support. Since then, he has been working hard to make sure that Maharashtra becomes “Maha-Rashtra” as its name suggest.
