A fire broke out at a Lord Ganesh pandal in Pune where BJP president J P Nadda was offering prayers along with the party’s Maharashtra unit chief Chandrashekhar Bawankule on Tuesday evening.
Visuals from the scene showed Nadda being safely escorted out of the venue even as the fire engulfed the top portion of the makeshift pandal in the Lokmanya Nagar area in the heart of the city.
No casualty was reported in the incident.
A fire brigade official said the blaze may have been caused by fireworks at the pandal set up by the Sane Guruji Ganesh Mitra Mandal.
Vivek Ramaswamy came in second in the poll with 26% support
A poll taken after the first GOP presidential primary debate on Wednesday showed that a plurality of Republican voters felt that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis won the night.
According to a Washington Post poll, conducted alongside FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos, 29% of Republican voters polled said that DeSantis performed the best out of the eight candidates on the stage in Milwaukee.
The poll was conducted from Aug. 23-24 and polled 775 potential Republican primary voters who watched the debate.
The second-best performance, according to the poll’s respondents, was from entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who had support from 26% of GOP voters in the poll.
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley was the only other candidate to poll in double digits, with 15% of GOP voters saying she had the best night.
Former Vice President Mike Pence came in fourth with 7% support, and was followed by South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who both tied with 4%.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson both polled at 1% in the debate.
“Last night, Ron DeSantis was the clear winner and proved that he is ready to beat Joe Biden and serve as America’s 47th president,” Andrew Romeo, communications director for the DeSantis campaign, told Fox News Digital. “The debate highlighted that DeSantis is the only candidate with the vision to reverse our nation’s decline and revive the American Dream.”
The showdown in Milwaukee, hosted by Fox News, was the first of monthly debates organized by the Republican National Committee.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday said he would skip the upcoming Republican primary debates, citing his large lead in opinion polls as evidence that he was already well-known and liked by voters ahead of the 2024 election.
Trump has for months suggested he would likely pass on Wednesday night’s debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, arguing that it did not make sense to give his Republican rivals a chance to attack him given his sizeable lead in national polls.
On Sunday, a CBS poll showed he was the preferred candidate for 62% of Republican voters, with his closest rival Florida Governor Ron DeSantis at 16%. All other candidates in the primary race had less than 10% support.
“The public knows who I am & what a successful Presidency I had,” Trump said on his social media app, Truth Social. “I will therefore not be doing the debates.”
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a question asking if the former president meant he won’t be taking part in any of the Republican debates.
The New York Times reported that Trump sat for a taped interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that was expected to be posted online on Wednesday. It was not yet clear where the interview with Carlson will be posted.
Trump’s absence from this week’s debate could mean DeSantis will become the focus of attacks from other candidates looking to position themselves as the primary alternative to the former president. The winner of the Republican nominating fight will take on Democratic President Joe Biden in the November 2024 election.