Fadnavis loyalists contesting Assembly election as Shiv Sena, RPI candidates
Mumbai: Senior BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis is leaving no stone unturned to get candidates of Shiv Sena and Republican Party of India elected from the Andheri (East) and Kalina Assembly constituencies respectively. The candidates fielded by the BJP’s alliance partners in the two constituencies are considered close associates of Fadnavis. They joined the Shiv Sena and the Ramdas Athawale-led party on Fadnavis’s instructions.
RPI (A) has fielded Mumbai BJP vice president Amarjeet Singh from the Kalina seat. In Andheri (East), chief minister Eknath Shinde has fielded Murji Patel, who was in the BJP earlier. The BJP has asked chief minister Shinde to convince Swikriti Sharma, wife of former encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma, to withdraw her nomination. Mr. Shinde will meet the Sharma family on Sunday.
An insider of the BJP-led ‘Mahayuti’ alliance said that the Shiv Sena was not ready to leave the Andheri East and Kalina seats as the undivided Shiv Sena had contested both the seats in 2019 and won. “It was Devendra Fadnavis who convinced Eknath Shinde to leave Kalina seat for the BJP, which gave it to the RPI. Apart from this, Mr. Fadnavis also successfully persuaded Shinde to announce Patel’s candidature from the Andheri East constituency, which he was not ready to give to the BJP,” the Mahayuti insider said.
The Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena wanted to field Swikriti Sharma, but the BJP opposed her candidature as her husband is one of the accused in the case related to explosives planted near industrialist Mukesh Ambani’s residence and murder of Mansukh Hiran, who was the key witness in the case.
According to the source, Fadnavis instructed Patel to join the Shiv Sena and contest from Andheri East against Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT)’s sitting MLA Rutuja Latke. Interestingly, Swikriti Sharma has filed her nomination as an independent candidate from Andheri east.
A BJP leader said that the BJP state leadership has spoken to the chief minister regarding Shama’s candidature. “He will meet the Sharma family on Sunday and convince them to withdraw the nomination to ensure that the Mahayuti votes do not get divided,” he said.
Mumbai BJP vice president Pawan Tripathi told this newspaper that CM Shinde will kick start the campaign of Murji Patel on Sunday at Sher-E-Punjab maidan in Andheri East.
In the Kalina seat, BJP’s Amarjeet Singh is contesting against the undivided Shiv Sena’s two term MLA Sanjay Potnis. In 2014, when the BJP and Shiv Sena contested the assembly election separately, Mr. Potnis had won the Kalina seat by a thin margin of 1,297 votes against Singh. This time, the BJP has fielded Mr. Singh as Mahayuti candidate from the RPI quota hoping to also get Dalit votes, which are significant in number. Although Kalina seat has been allotted to the RPI (A), Mr. Singh has been contesting on the BJP’s symbol ‘lotus’.
Mr. Singh said that there is anti-incumbency against Potnis as he was not available for the people in the Kalina constituency. “During his tenure, Potnis did not address the issues of water and traffic jams in the constituency. As a result, the people in the constituency are looking for an alternative,” the Mahayuti candidate said.
Potnis, who is loyal to Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray, said that the people have been electing him from the last six elections. “I have been elected four times as a corporator and two times as an MLA. The people will repose their faith in me after considering my works,” the said.