Ending suspense over the Satara Lok Sabha seat, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday finally announced the candidature of Maratha royal and BJP Rajya Sabha MP Udayanraje Bhosale for the key constituency in western Maharashtra.
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Mr. Bhosale, the 13th direct descendant of the Maratha warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji, had been eagerly gunning for a ticket from the Satara constituency.
Mr. Bhosale had even started campaigning despite the BJP’s Mahayuti allies — the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena — remaining absent from his rallies.
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The BJP, which finally announced the Maratha royal’s candidacy in its 12th list, took its time in officially naming Mr. Bhosale, given that its ally, the Ajit Pawar-led NCP too had staked its claim over the seat.
Despite his status and influence in Satara as a descendant of Shivaji, Mr. Bhosale was compelled to lobby the BJP top brass in Delhi for a ticket.
Tuesday’s announcement came a day after the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) staged a massive show of strength in Satara as its candidate, the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) faction’s Shashikant Shinde, filed his nomination.
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The hell-raising royal, known for his flamboyant behaviour, had previously won the Satara Lok Sabha seat thrice on an (undivided) NCP ticket.
Except for a brief period in the 1990s, when it had a Shiv Sena MP, Satara has remained first a Congress stronghold (since the 1950s), and later was dominated by Sharad Pawar’s undivided NCP after the latter formed his party by splitting the Congress in 1999.
In 2009, Mr. Pawar fielded had fielded Mr. Bhosale, who won the Satara Lok Sabha on an NCP ticket by a massive margin of more than three lakh votes. He repeated the feat in the 2014 General Election as well.
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While his vote margin reduced in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Mr. Bhosale, still in the NCP, nonetheless managed to defeated his rival, the BJP’s candidate Narendra Patil, by a comfortable margin of more than 1.5 lakh votes.
Mr. Bhosale was one of four NCP MPs to successfully defy the ‘Modi onslaught’ of 2019.
However, that same year, Mr. Bhosale jumped ship to the join the ruling BJP. In the Satara Lok Sabha bypoll, the Maratha royal was decisively defeated by Mr. Sharad Pawar’s close aide, Shriniwas Patil, proving that the NCP patriarch still held sway over Satara.
One of the districts in the sugar heartland, Satara has always been under the influence of the late Congress leader and former Union Minister Y.B. Chavan (who was Maharashtra’s first CM), and later Mr. Sharad Pawar.
Satara goes to the polls in the third phase on May 7.