Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar on Wednesday announced his party’s first list of five candidates — all from Beed district — for the Assembly polls, sending a strong signal to his political opponents that the NCP had no dearth of candidates.
As the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena are yet to finalise the seat-sharing arrangement, Mr. Pawar’s declaration in Beed is being seen by observers as a ‘damage control’ move to show that despite being hit by a spate of defections, the party is still in the reckoning.
The candidates announced by Mr. Pawar are Dhananjay Munde — Leader of Opposition in the State Council — for the crucial Parli Assembly seat; Sandeep Kshirsagar for Beed; Vijaysinh Pandit from Georai; Namita Mundada for Kaij; and veteran campaigner Prakash Solanke for Majalgaon.
With the exception of Mr. Solanke, the other four candidates are experienced, but youthful faces of the NCP. “I am fighting this election on the strength of the youth,” said 79-year-old Mr. Pawar, while making the announcement.
Before the BJP’s ascendancy in the State in 2014, Beed has been an NCP bastion for several years.
The youthful candidates are not ‘fresh faces’ but scions of well-known political families in the district, all of whom have played dominant roles in their respective tehsils for decades.
The Parli seat, which is held by Mr. Munde’s estranged cousin, BJP leader, and Rural Development Minister Pankaja Munde, is likely to witness a bitter contest. In 2014, Ms. Munde had beaten her cousin by a margin of more than 25,000 votes.
Mr. Kshirsagar is the nephew and a bitter political rival of NCP turncoat Jaydutt Kshirsagar, who switched allegiance to join the Sena in May after resigning as an MLA. He was promptly inducted into the State Cabinet by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis the next month and given the Employment Guarantee and Horticulture portfolios.
Last month, during the NCP’s Shiv Swarajya Yatra in Beed, Sandeep Kshirsagar had alleged that his uncle, Mr. Kshirsagar, had paid ₹50 crore for being inducted into the cabinet.
Mr. Solanke, a businessman, sugar baron, and politico from Majalgaon, had won three consecutive elections — from 1999 to 2014. The son of Congress veteran Sundarrao Solanke, Mr. Solanke was with the BJP, winning the seat twice — in 1999 and 2004 — before casting his lot with Mr. Pawar and the NCP. In the 2014 elections, he lost to the BJP’s R.T. Deshmukh.
Mr. Pandit, the son of senior leader Shivajirao Pandit, is the younger brother of NCP MLC Amarsinh Pandit. In fact, in November 2017, Mr. Pandit was being tipped as the NCP’s candidate for the Georai seat after his successful leadership as president of Beed zilla parishad.
The Pandit family has essayed a crucial role in Georai’s politics until their dominance was shattered by the BJP’s advocate Laxman Pawar, who scored a thumping win over Badamrao Pandit (Shivajirao’s cousin) in 2014 to snatch the Georai seat.
The BJP’s further consolidation in the municipal council polls under advocate Pawar’s leadership is bound to make the upcoming contest a daunting one for Mr. Pandit.
Ms. Mundada is the daughter of the late Maharashtra minister, Vimal Mundada, who had won Kaij in five consecutive elections and had held it until her untimely death in 2012. Ms. Mundada is likely to be pitted against sitting BJP MLA Sangita Thombre.
Like Prakash Solanke, Vimal Mundada, too, had a long association with the BJP, winning twice – in 1990 and 1995 – on a BJP ticket.
