With elections to 14 civic bodies in Maharashtra, including the cash-rich Mumbai, Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad municipal corporations likely to be held in April, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Pune city on March 6 is expected to give a major boost to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as it gears up to retain its dominance in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad.
In his typically hectic schedule, the PM will be inaugurating the Pune Metro rail – touted as the panacea to the city’s burgeoning traffic woes; unveil a statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in the main building of Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC); lay the foundation stone of Pune Riverfront Development Project whose objective is to clean and rejuvenate 44 km stretch of the city’s polluted rivers and inaugurate a slew of other development works.
While he has visited Pune a number of times after becoming Prime Minister, Mr. Modi will be only the second PM to visit the PMC building after Jawaharlal Nehru, who had visited the civic body premises at the time of the 1961 Pune floods.
