Mumbai: During a media interaction this week, Pooja More-Jadhav described being dropped as Mahayuti’s candidate for the Pune municipal polls as ‘punishment for a small mistake’. The reference, for those familiar with her social media presence, was to a video More-Jadhav posted after the Pahalgam attack.
But the outrage among party workers and local functionaries which forced the BJP to withdraw her candidature was also over her other controversial videos, which resurfaced on social media after the party gave her a ticket to contest from Ward no 2 (Phulenagar-Nagpurchawl) under the quota of alliance partner Republican Party of India (Athawale).
More-Jadhav took part in the Maratha agitation in 2017, and a video from the time purportedly shows her criticising CM Devendra Fadnavis and his wife. The comment was: “Devendra Fadnavis ji, I am demanding Maratha reservation, not your wife.”
There is also a photograph of Pooja More-Jadhav with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi during the 2022 Bharat Jodo Yatra which is now doing the rounds on social media.
“Party workers were upset over giving candidature to her. They insisted loyal party workers should be given candidature but not her. Therefore, she was asked to withdraw and the party decided to support another Independent candidate in place of her,” Union Minister and former Pune mayor Murlidhar Mohol told the media.
At a press conference she held immediately after withdrawing her candidature, More-Jadhav tearfully narrated her life’s story and ‘clarified’ the controversies surrounding her.
“While doing politics, we also think emotionally since we don’t belong to any political background. And that is why I took the decision of withdrawing my candidature,” she said.
Who is Pooja More-Jadhav?
Pooja’s social media profile claims she has a degree in law. In 2024, she contested assembly elections from Georai constituency in Beed district on a ticket from Maharashtra Swarajya Party led by Yuvraj Sambhaji Chhatrapati. But she managed just 1,710 votes.
At the press conference, More-Jadhav said she comes from a poor farming family in Beed and has been struggling to make a mark in politics for the past 10-12 years.
“I don’t have any political background. But I was working for farmers in Beed and that’s why I was elected to the panchayat samiti at the age of 21,” she said.
She added that she met her husband Dhananjay Jadhav when she was working for Maharashtra Swarajya Party and they got married about eight months ago.
According to her Instagram profile, BJP leaders Devendra Fadnavis, Ashish Shelar, Murlidhar Mohol and Sharad Pawar’s grand-nephew Rohit Pawar attended the wedding.
Pooja More-Jadhav relocated to Pune after the wedding. She and her husband advocate reservation in Maharashtra through a foundation called the Dhanajay Jadhav Foundation, which distributed 5,000 kg of chicken in Pune to celebrate ‘Akhad Sunday’ in July last year.
She has also been associated with the NCP (SP), and canvassed for their candidate from Beed, Bajrang Sonavane, in the Lok Sabha 2024 elections.
As far as controversies are concerned, she denied ever criticising Fadnavis, saying it was some “other girl” from Maratha Kranti Morcha who took part in the protest, but social media users attributed the statement to her.
In her video after the Pahalgam attack, she had said: “I am a Hindu. And I’ve been in Kashmir since morning. Let me tell you, the Muslims here are with us. They’ve stood beside us, shoulder to shoulder. No one asked me what my religion is. No one threatened us. The attackers want to scare people away from Kashmir. But the people of Kashmir, Hindu or Muslim, want us here. They are helping us, protecting us. There is no Hindu-Muslim here. We are all humans. Let humanity live. Let us not divide this beautiful land with hate.”
Speaking about her video later, she said: “I wanted to give a message that terrorists want to destroy our harmony and that is why I gave that reaction but when the reactions of the injured started coming out, I understood the picture…but I became the victim of social media trolling. I did change my statement later but it did not go viral.”
She admitted to having erred with her statement after the Pahalgam attack, saying, “Many big people make mistakes but they are not trolled but common people are trolled.”
(Edited by Viny Mishra)