During the standing committee meeting last Tuesday, Congress corporators including Bagul and Virendra Kirad had taken an initiative to transfer the budgetary powers of the standing committee chairman Shyam Deshpande of Shiv Sena to NCP’s Anil Bhosale. Congress and NCP had voted together to elect Bhosale for the task of finalising the draft budget prepared by the municipal commissioner.

However, the same Congress is now criticising NCP for changing its position and keeping its alliance with the Sena intact. The press release issued by Bagul says: “Congress is bound for the development of Pune. With a view to make uniform growth of the city, Congress extended support to NCP last week. The standing committee chairman had not distributed the budgetary allocations to all the parts of the city. This move was meant to benefit only the wards under the Shiv Sena corporators as the budgetary allocations were more than necessary for a particular ward.”

Further, Bagul has stated that even though it was NCP’s initiative to take the budgetary powers from Shiv Sena and Congress just supported this move, whereas in reality it was Congress, which had taken an initiative to do so and not NCP.