Campaigning for tomorrow's civic poll concludes

Updated on: 15 February,2012 07:15 AM IST |
Priyankka Deshpande |

With Model Code of Conduct (MCC) in place, campaigning for tomorrow's civic polls in the city and Pimpri-Chinchwad ended yesterday evening.

With Model Code of Conduct (MCC) in place, campaigning for tomorrow's civic polls in the city and Pimpri-Chinchwad ended yesterday evening. The main competition is between the Congress, the NCP, the Shiv Sena-BJP-RPI alliance and the MNS for 152 seats in the city.

u00a0Apart from fielding big wigs for the polls, all the political parties had star campaigners conducting rallies all across the city to woo voters.u00a0While Congress relied heavily on Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, NCP brought in Deputy CM Ajit Pawar.

Other star campaigners wereu00a0-- Deputy Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Gopinath Munde and Smriti Irani for BJP, MNS chief Raj Thackeray and Shiv Sena Executive President Uddhav Thackeray. According to poll pundits, rallies conducted by these leaders were nothing but a platform to showcase their party's strength to the voters. However, they stated that such tactics fail to impress the educated and the upper class voters.

While Prithviraj Chavan blamed Ajit Pawar for politicising the city's development issues during one of his several rallies in the city, Pawar hit back at the CM and the Congress over tainted MP Suresh Kalmadi securing bail.
Joining Pawar, Munde too lashed out at Chavan for his statement that Sena supremo Bal Thackeray would lose influence after Thursday's civic polls. Raj Thackeray and his wife Sharmila conducted road shows in various parts of the city to reach out to the voters.

152
The number of seats in the city