Pune: Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi’s Pune city unit received a setback after the party’s president Munawwar Qureshi and two office-bearers resigned last week and joined NCP (SCP). The party announced the dissolution of the unit on August 8. Former corporator Vasant More, who had contested the Lok Sabha election on a VBA ticket, also resigned and joined Shiv Sena (UBT).
Political observers claim that this shift before the assembly election will weaken VBA and benefit MVA in the city. In the 2019 assembly elections, VBA’s vote share in five of the eight assembly constituencies of Pune city was more than the winning margin of the candidates. In two of these five seats, BJP candidates lost the election while Congress lost in two seats and an undivided NCP lost one seat.
Qureshi was appointed vice president of the state minority cell by NCP (SCP) chief Sharad Pawar . “In the VBA, all rights are vested in Prakash Ambedkar. It is difficult to reach out to him for every decision, hence I could not work with them and decided to resign ,” he said.
State president of VBA Siddharth Mokle said the dissolution of the committee in Pune was routine and the party keeps changing office-bearers. “This (resignations) will not have any impact because booth committees will continue to prepare for the assembly election,” he said. We also published the following articles recently Here's why Ajit Pawar asked NCP office-bearers from Baramati constituency to resign Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pa.