Mumbai: Even as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is making grand plans to have 10 election rallies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and 20 poll rallies of party president Amit Shah during the election campaign period, the ignited sparks of rebellion threaten to disrupt all the well laid out plans. Rebel senior party leader and former minister Eknath Khadse has raised a banner of revolt by filing his nomination papers on Tuesday even as the partys central election committee is yet to clear his candidature. Reports of rebellion from Kothrud against state president Chandrakant Patil are fresh.
Speaking to newspersons in Jalgaon here, Khadse admitted that he has filed his nomination papers as he was confident of getting the party ticket. He said that he had served the party for the last 42 years and had often refused allurements from the opposition. Khadse who was the Revenue minister in the Fadnavis cabinet was forced to step down following allegations of corruption against him.
Meanwhile, the sizeable and influential Brahmin community in Kothrud assembly constituency have vociferously opposed the candidature of Chandrakant Patil demanding that their next MLA should be from the community only. The BJP is yet to announce the names of candidates for 21 assembly seats from its quota, out of these 18 seats are sitting seats. October 2 is a holiday on account of Gandhi Jayanti and October 4 is the last day for filing of nomination papers. Both the Sena and BJP have a day to spare within which they can decide on the candidature and who should contest the contentious seats.
Contrary to the perception being created in a section of the media that the BJP has bent its back backwards by allocating more seats to its ally the Shiv Sena, especially in Mumbai, Thane, Konkan, Nashik and Western Maharashtra, the BJP in reality has retained the region wise quota of seats and seats it had won in the 2014 assembly elections.
Of the names of 125 candidates declared in the first list, the division wise (region wise) break up of the seats share and the seats BJP won in 2014 reveals that in reality BJP has not given anything away to the Sena. Of the 34 seats the BJP is contesting in Western Maharashtra, the party had won 19 seats in the 2014 polls. The BJP is contesting 11 seats at the moment in North Maharashtra, whereas in 2014 elections the BJP had won 19 seats of the 46 seats it contested.
In Vidharbha the BJP is now contesting at present 38 seats of the 44 seats it had won in the 2014 elections. In the Thane-Mumbai belt the BJP is currently contesting 20 seats. In the 2014 assembly elections the BJP had won 9 seats in Thane and 15 seats in Mumbai. In Marathwada region the BJP is contesting 17 seats, while in 2014 the party had won 17 seats only. Contrary to the image being created that the BJP has given up its hold on the Konkan region by acknowledging Sena’s hold. The fact remains that the BJP had won the Panvel seat in 2014 elections. It should now get the second seat of Kankavli as sitting Congress MLA Nitesh Narayan Rane resigned from his membership of the lower house. He is slated to join the BJP along with his father soon.
Although sources in Sena-BJP in awe remark that the issue in the seat sharing was not who got how many seats to contest but emphasis was on which candidate stood a better chance to win the seat was the deciding factor, the fact of the matter is that the BJP, especially in Vidharbha region has let go its claim on those seats which it had lost in the 2014 elections or has consistently lost.
As of today the BJP has denied tickets to 7 of its sitting MLA’s who include – Medha Kulkarni (Kothrud), Sudhakar Kohale (Nagpur South), Raju Todsam (Arni – ST), Govind Rathod (Mukhed), Sardar Tara Singh (Mulund), Dilip Kamble (Pune Cantonment –SC) and R T Deshmukh (Majalgaon). It is still not clear whether the BJP has cleared or denied tickets to – Eknath Khadse (Muktainagar), Sangeeta Thombre (Kaij-SC) or Raj K Purohit (Colaba).
However, it is more or less certain that Namita Mundada will replace Thombre in Kaij-SC. Besides this, the BJP has given new faces in Chalisgaon – Mangesh Patil, Mukta Tilak from Kasba Peth, since sitting BJP MLAs Unmesh Patil and Girish Bapat respectively were elected to the Lok Sabha recently. However, it has replaced sitting senior minister Vishnu Sawara on account of his age factor and instead given ticket to his son Dr Hemant Sawara.
