Mumbai: The Bharatiya Janata Party Saturday named Ritu Tawde, its three-term corporator from Ghatkopar, as its candidate for Mumbai mayor, positioning the party to install its second mayor in the city’s municipal corporation in over four decades.
The announcement comes ahead of the mayoral election scheduled for 11 February, after the BJP emerged as the single-largest party in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation polls held in January.
The party won 89 seats in the 227-member House, while its ally, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, secured 29 seats. With the alliance crossing the halfway mark, the BJP is set to install its mayor, while the Shinde-led Shiv Sena will have the deputy mayor.
The Shinde faction has named Sanjay Ghadi as its candidate for the deputy mayor’s post, which will be for an 18-month term, the party has said.
Announcing Tawde’s candidature, BJP MLA Ameet Satam said, “I had said from the very first day that we will give Mumbai a Marathi Hindu mayor. May be, they (the Opposition) wanted someone else. But because of us, Mumbai has got a Marathi Hindu Konkani Malvani mayor.”
If elected, Tawde will become the second BJP mayor in Mumbai’s history. The first was Prabhakar Pai, who served between 1982 and 1983.
Kishori Pednekar, a corporator from the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena and a former Mumbai mayor, said, “The BJP had to finally concede that Hindus also include the Marathi manus (son of the soil). They have given a Marathi mayor. We will not cause any impediments. There’s an arithmetic of the number of seats, which we accept. We will act as a strong Opposition party as per procedure, without falling prey to any pressures.”
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Who is Ritu Tawde?
After the January results made it clear that the BJP would be in a position to install its mayor, and a subsequent lottery determined that the mayor would be a woman, Tawde emerged as one of the frontrunners for the post.
“All of us women corporators have fought a war and won, so none of us knew who would get this. But the BJP is a disciplined cadre-based party, and we all respect the party’s decision,” Tawde told reporters Saturday.
A lottery is organised by the state government to decide on reservation of mayoral seats across municipal bodies in Maharashtra. In BMC’s case, the lottery chose a woman candidate from the general category this time around. The BMC General Assembly subsequently will convene next week to elect its mayor.
Tawde represents a ward in Ghatkopar, an eastern suburb that has been a BJP stronghold in Mumbai. She joined the BJP from the Congress in 2012 and has been elected as a corporator in all civic elections since then.
Seen as an aggressive Marathi face from the Gujarati-dominated area of Ghatkopar, Tawde previously served as chairperson of the BMC’s education committee.
In 2013, she vociferously demanded a ban on displays of lingerie on mannequins at shopfronts. When the proposal first came up for discussion, the BMC informed its corporators that it could not implement a blanket ban under the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act.
Action could be taken under the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986, but only a gazetted rank officer could make such a provision. The demand was later revived in 2019 by Sheetal Mhatre, a corporator from the then undivided Shiv Sena. Mhatre is currently with the Shinde-led faction.
If Tawde takes the mayor’s chair, she will face four former mayors—Kishori Pednekar, Vishakha Raut, Shraddha Jadhav and Milind Vaidya—sitting on the Opposition benches.
She appears unfazed. “This is a post with a historical significance and we have to maintain its pride of place. Everybody sitting in the general body wants to work for the wellbeing of Mumbai. My sincere wish is that we all forgot party differences and work towards that goal,” Tawde said.
(Edited by Prerna Madan)
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