NCP (SP) declares candidates from Beed, Bhiwandi
NCP declares candidates for Beed and Bhiwandi for Lok Sabha elections, raising eyebrows as MVA fails to reach consensus on key seats.
Mumbai: The Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) on Thursday declared candidates for the Beed and Bhiwandi constituencies for the forthcoming Lok Sabha election, taking the total number of candidates declared by the party to seven. The announcement of its candidate from Bhiwandi raised eyebrows in political circles as it is one of the three seats on which the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) – comprising NCP (SP), Shiv Sena (UBT) and Congress – failed to reach a consensus including in its last meeting held on Wednesday.
The NCP (SP), which is expected to contest ten seats as part of the MVA in the polls scheduled to begin on April 19, had declared five candidates in its first list. Apart from Bhiwandi, the MVA has failed to arrive at a consensus on the Sangli and Mumbai South Central Lok Sabha seats.
From Bhiwandi, a seat which the Congress has laid claim to, the NCP (SP) has nominated Suresh Mhatre, who holds charge of the party in the constituency. He will take on the sitting MP Kapil Patil, who has been renominated by the BJP.
Mhatre contested from Bhiwandi for the first time, unsuccessfully, in the 2014 Lok Sabha poll as an MNS candidate. The Congress has not reacted to the announcement of his candidature yet.
From Beed, NCP (SP) founder Sharad Pawar chose Bajrang Sonwane over Jyoti Mete, wife of the deceased Shiv Sangram founder Vinayak Mete, even though she has a significant following among Marathas and was ready to join the NCP (SP).
Sonawane was the unified NCP’s candidate from Beed who took on Pritam Munde from the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He polled 5.09 lakh votes but lost the election by a margin of 1.68 lakh votes. He sided with the Ajit Pawar faction when the NCP split in July last year but returned to the Sharad Pawar faction on March 20. This time, Sonawane is set to take on Pankaja Munde, daughter of the deceased BJP stalwart Gopinath Munde and the party’s national secretary.
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