According to senior party leaders, the party is now trying to accommodate Poonam in the Pune seat as she may be acceptable to the two factions led by Gopinath Munde and Nitin Gadkari, which are now pushing for Anil Shirole and Vikas Matkari respectively. The candidates for Pune and Baramati will be finalised in two days as the party has already declared 11 of the 26 seats it is contesting in the state. Poonam said, “It is purely the party’s decision. As the names are not announced yet, I do not want to comment. I am just a party worker. Whatever the party wants of me, I will do,” she said.

Senior BJP leaders, however, said Poonam is being considered because she cannot contest in Mumbai. “Pune will be the right choice for her,” one of them said. He denounced rumours that the party was planning to field a candidate from outside the party. “When we have good candidates, why should we look outside?” he said. “We were looking for a third candidate as there were a lot of internal differences regarding the two probables and a third will be the answer to sort out the issue,” a member said.

Poonam is now the general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the party, and she has been active in getting youth involved in politics. Her recent achievement was in organising a youth rally in Pune last week, where the star attraction was Narendra Modi.

Sena candidate in Shirur