The rift between Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena and the Congress seemed to have widened over seat distribution for the coming Lok Sabha elections. The talks between the Opposition bloc Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) have been stuck over several seats mainly Sangli, Hatkanangale, Mumbai South-Central and Mumbai North-West.
After announcing its first list of 17 candidates, including for the Sangli seat and a few from Mumbai last week, the Shiv Sena (UBT) on Wednesday declared four more candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, fielding Vaishali Darekar-Rane from the high-profile Kalyan constituency, currently represented by state Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s son Shrikant Shinde.
With this, the Uddhav Thackeray-led party has so far declared nominees for 21 seats in Maharashtra, which will vote in five phases starting April 19.
Addressing a news conference, Thackeray also declared the candidature of Satyajit Patil, Bharti Kamdi and Karan Pawar from Hatkanangale, Palghar, and Jalgaon constituencies, respectively.
Thackeray said if Maha Vika Aghadi (MVA) ally Congress is not keen on contesting the Mumbai North constituency, then his party will field a candidate from that seat.
Meanwhile, BJP has fielded Union minister Piyush Goyal from Mumbai North constituency. The Shiv Sena led by Eknath Shinde has not yet opened its cards on the Kalyan seat.
Notably, Darekar-Rane had contested from the Kalyan seat on the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) ticket against Shiv Sena’s Anand Paranjape in the 2009 elections. She had finished third by bagging 1.02 lakh votes.
Hatkanangale constituency in western Maharashtra was won by Dhairyasheel Mane of Shiv Sena (undivided) in the previous elections.
Jalgaon seat is represented by Unmesh Patil of BJP, who on Wednesday crossed over to Shiv Sena (UBT) after being denied a ticket by his parent party for the upcoming contest.
Palghar seat is currently represented by undivided Shiv Sena’s Rajendra Gavit.
(With inputs from PTI)
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