India, Jan. 13 -- In a move that has drawn attention amid the party's limited representation of the Muslim community in the 2026 civic polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded 28-year-old Noor Fatima Hussain Khan from Kondhwa ward number 19 in the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) elections.

Kondhwa is a Muslim-dominated and socially diverse pocket of south Pune, and has traditionally been considered difficult terrain for the BJP. Khan, who holds a B Com from Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), is a university gold medallist who passed with first class-distinction. She is the BJP's lone candidate in the ward, and is facing a three-cornered contest against Nanda Lonkar (Nationalist Congress Party/NCP), Taslem Hasan Shaikh (...