Lone Christian member in Pune Municipal Corporation is from MIM

Lone Christian member in Pune Municipal Corporation is from MIM
CAMIL PARKHE | Monday, 13 March 2017 AT 12:51 PM IST
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All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, political party, Muslim community, Christian candidate, PMC election,MIM, Ashwini Landge, christian community, Pune, Camil Parkhe   goo.gl/GLVU3f
PUNE: The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, otherwise referred to as a political party representing only the Muslim community, has provided the only Christian member in the newly elected Pune Municipal Corporation.

Ashwini Daniel Landge, a MIM nominee, was elected a member of the Pune Municipal Corporation from the open woman category in panel number six from Yerwada.  Incidentally Landge is also the MIM's only member in the 162-member House.

The MIM had contested altogether 25 seats in the city. The party had hoped to win a few seats in Muslim-dominated Kondhwa and adjoining areas but failed to win any seats there.  Apparently the social engineering done by Ashwini Landge and her local supporters led to her victory.

The panel number six  has a sizable number of voters belonging to the dalits, Muslims and Christian communities. Incidentally, all the other three elected members from this panel belong to the Shiv Sena.

Landge has defeated her former standing committee chairperson Sangita Devkar of the Congress. 

The 32-year-old newly elected corporator has passed Std XII and is a homemaker. She says that local residents raised a fund to pay for her election campaign expenses including printing of pamphlets.

The Landge couple who have two children stay in a rented premises near Gunjan Theatre in Yerwada.

The corporator's husband, Daniel Landge, is a social worker, involved in helping the people in getting free medical help in various hospital and providing assistance to get their work done in various government establishments.

“The local people had insisted that my husband who is a known social worker contest the civic polls. But he said entering politics would affect his social work and therefore suggested that I contest the polls,” says Ashwini Landge.

Landge family is a member of the Christ Church located in Quartergate. The church had recently felicitated her after her electoral success.  Pune Bishop Thomas Dabre has also congratulated  the only Christian member in Pune Municipal Corporation on her poll victory. 

The 25 candidates fielded by the MIM belonged to various castes and  religious backgrounds. These candidates contested in the A, B C and D categories reserved for other backward classes, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and also in open categories.

Many Muslim candidates fielded by the Congress and the Nationalist Congress party have been elected to the Pune Municipal corporation. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is the ruling party both in India and Maharashtra state had also nominated some Muslim candidates in the  civic polls. The BJP  has now for the first time won power in Pune Municipal Corporation. However none of the Muslim candidates fielded by the BJP in Muslim-dominant wards have been elected. Thus this will be for the first time that the ruling group in Pune Municipal Corporation will not have a single Muslim or minority face. 

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