Mumbai: It does seem as though the central Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership has put senior party leaders and minister’s – Vinod Tawde, Chandrashekhar Bawankule, rebel leader Eknath Khadse and party chief whip Raj K Purohit on the tenterhooks. In the second list of 14 candidates whose names were cleared late on Wednesday night, again finds no mention of either Khadse, Tawde, Bawankule or Purohit. While doing so the party has also denied party tickets to 4 sitting MLAs. The party is yet to announce names of candidates for about 7 more seats and the last date for filing nomination papers is October 4.
The party has been benign towards party hopper, sitting Congress MLA Gopaldas Agarwal and nominated him to retain his Gondiya assembly seat now as a BJP candidate. Besides this the party has also been kind on minister of state for Tribal Affairs Amrish Raje Atram who has been renominated from Aheri (ST) seat. Sources disclosed that the tribal royal has earned a reprieve despite his being absent from the legislature and Mantralaya. The BJP has renominated former MLA Kumar Aaliyani from the Ulhasnagar assembly seat. The party has also been kind enough to nominate Pratapdada Adsad, son of its MLC Arunbhau Adsad from the Dhamangaon Railway constituency.
The party has denied tickets to 4 sitting BJP MLAs and instead given tickets to new faces, they are – Ramesh Mawaskar (Melghat – ST) in place of sitting MLA Prabhudas Bhiwalkar, Namdev Sasane (Umarkhed – SC) in place of Rajendra Najardhane, Dilip Borase (Baglan – ST) in place of Dipika S Chavan and Dr Anil Kamble (Udgir – SC) in place of Sudhakar Bhalerao. The party has also nominated its sitting MLC Nilay Naik from Pusad assembly constituency, who is likely to take on his uncle and sitting Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MLA Manohar Naik.
Besides this the party has given ticket to Mohan Gokul Suryavanshi from Sakri (ST) constituency, Gopichand Padalkar from Baramati who will take on NCP strongman Ajit Pawar, sitting MLA and minister Sanjay (Bala) Bhegade has been renominated from Maval constituency. Party has also nominated, party hopper Namita Mundada from Kaij (SC). Namita Mundada was with the NCP and is the daughter-in-law of former NCP, ex-BJP MLA, late Dr Vimaltai Mundada. Shailesh Lahoti has been given yet another chance to contest from Latur City constituency against sitting Congress MLA, Amit Deshmukh.
