By: Harshad Oak
I would love to be proven wrong and see the Maharashtra Premier League (MPL) 20-20 cricket league be successful. The MPL concept sure had the potential, but unfortunately the format and packaging makes it seem like the MPL will not deliver.
The election results for the India General Elections 2009 will be announced on the 16th of May. Pune city voted long back, on the 23rd of April 09. So it’s going to be a long wait before we know if the candidate we voted for will actually make it to the LokSabha, the House Of the People and the lower house of the Parliament Of India.
Google and Hindustan Times have created a very useful site where you can get the latest election news, MP profiles, constituency statistics, candidate quotes, polling booth locations and more, all personalized to your location. Just specify your city or town, and get election information relevant to you.
At just 40%, Pune saw it’s worst ever voter turnout for the Loksabha elections. Mumbai was slightly better at 44%. The dismal voter turnout numbers have shocked most of educated India. Political leaders are smirking on TV saying things like “You blame us politicians for not caring about the country, but even the ordinary citizen does not care.” I have no insider info on the matter, but am just trying to apply some common sense to figure out what could have gone wrong.
Doing some final checks before I finalize the candidate I would be voting for in tomorrows election. Just visited the websites of all the top candidates to check if they have something new to say. Nothing new there. A couple of sites seem to have actually gone down. Next looking at http://myneta.info/pune for a quick and easy to read synopsis of the affidavits filed by the Pune Loksabha candidates. The details of 3 candidates including BJP’s Anil Shirole are missing from the sheet.
Below are my short takeaways about who I think are the top 6 candidates. There are 10s of candidates contesting for the Pune seat, so there could be other worthy candidates, unfortunately I haven’t heard of them.
Campaigning for the Pune Loksabha elections has ended, so thought I would have a quick look at what was good and bad about the election campaign in Pune.
In a previous post “Wealth & Assets Of Candidates“, I mentioned how you can access the affidavits filed by the election candidates. However there’s an easier way than having to go through the affidavits of all candidates. Check out http://myneta.info/. The site provides an easy and tabular comparison of the various candidates contesting in a constituency.
Below are the affidavits of the candidates contesting for the Pune Loksabha Seat in India’s General Elections 2009. Click on the names to open the scanned PDF documents. You can check the details of the wealth, holdings, assets of the candidates and their criminal record, if any. Use these links to have a look at candidate affidavits across – Pune, Maharashtra and India .
