Allegations that employees of the Pune District Central Cooperative Bank (PDCC) were used to campaign for Bharatiya Janata Party candidates have put institutional neutrality under scrutiny ahead of polling in Pune’s graduate and teachers’ constituencies of the Maharashtra Legislative Council. The claims were made by NCP (SP) leaders Supriya Sule and Rohit Pawar in posts on X, but have not been independently verified in the material supplied for this report.
Sule alleged that appeals were being made to voters to support BJP candidates from the PDCC Bank’s Bhavaninagar branch in Indapur taluka. She also shared a call recording in her post. The contents and provenance of the recording have not been independently established, and the report does not include a response from the bank, the Election Commission or the individuals alleged to be involved.
Sule described the alleged use of a cooperative institution and its employees for political campaigning as serious and objectionable. She said cooperative institutions were intended to serve the interests of all their members and should not be used for political propaganda.
“If employees of an important cooperative institution in Pune district are being used for political campaigning, it goes against the fundamental principles of cooperation,” Sule said in her post, according to the report. She urged the Election Commission and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to take note of the allegations, order an immediate inquiry and initiate action against anyone found responsible.
The allegations have a wider governance dimension because district central cooperative banks occupy an important position in the rural institutional network. Their employees and branches interact with farmers, members and depositors, making questions about political pressure especially sensitive during an election. The supplied report, however, does not establish whether any bank employee formally participated in campaigning, whether any directive was issued by the institution, or whether the alleged activity violated an identified election rule.
Rohit Pawar made a separate allegation that a leader from the Ajit Pawar-led NCP faction in Pune district had mobilised bank employees to campaign for BJP candidates. He claimed that a meeting had been held at the bank two days earlier without involving other stakeholders and that a BJP office-bearer from Pune city had been invited to address those present.
According to Pawar, bank employees were later directed to work for BJP candidates contesting the graduate and teachers’ constituencies. He questioned the alleged involvement of bank staff in the Legislative Council election and appealed to employees not to follow what he described as unlawful instructions. Pawar said their responsibility was to provide services to farmers and claimed that the alleged activity was being monitored.
The timing has heightened the sensitivity of the claims. Campaigning for the two constituencies ended on Wednesday, a day before polling scheduled for Friday. Votes are due to be counted on October 27. The supplied report does not state whether the Election Commission or any other authority had opened an inquiry by the time of publication.
The allegations therefore remain claims made by political leaders rather than established findings. Verification would require a response from PDCC Bank, clarification from the named or implicated political actors, examination of the call recording and any relevant institutional records, and an account of action taken by election authorities. Until those steps are documented, the central question—whether bank employees or the institution itself were used for campaign activity—remains unresolved.
