Royalty, stars, dynasts enliven Maha pollscape
Besides the ordinary streetsmart professional politicians, there are several others who have taken the political plunge for the October 21 Maharashtra Assembly elections.
They include royalty, like a descendent of Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, some film stars — and even a scribe desirous of creating headlines.
The BJP has nominated its high-profile Pune Mayor Mukta Tilak – the wife of Shailesh Tilak – who is the great-grandson of the freedom fighter, Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak. She is locking horns with the Congress’ Arvind Shinde for the Kasbapeth seat in the city, which is referred to as the state’s cultural, academic and IT capital. Interestingly, both are already rivals in the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) as senior municipal corporators, though for Tilak, it will be a matter of prestige to retain the seat held for 25 years by Girish Bapat, who was elected to Lok Sabha in the 2019 polls.
Wellknown Marathi actress Deepali Jehangir Sayyad has been given a Shiv Sena ticket to challenge NCP’s former minister and National Spokesperson Jitendra Awhad from the Mumbra-Kalwa seat. Sayyad had earlier contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections unsuccessfully from Ahmednagar as an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) nominee and has now walked over to the Sena.
nother controversial actor Ajaz Khan of Bigg Boss fame is contesting the Byculla seat as an independent, challenging two mega-rivals - All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen’s sitting MLA Waris Pathan and also Akhil Bharatiya
ASena’s Geeta Gawli. Incidentally, a BMC corporator, Geeta Gawli is the eldest daughter of the once-dreaded mafia don Arun G. Gawli, a former MLA who is now incarcerated for life in Nagpur Central Jail.
bhijeet Bichukal e, the Marathi Bigg Boss contestant, who shot to headlines when the Satara Police stormed into the house set and dragged him away kicking and screaming, for a cheque-bouncing case in which he was absconding. Hoping to cash in on his glamour persona, Bichukale is an independent challenging the might of none other than Shiv Sena scion
AAditya Thackeray in Worli seat in what appears to be a contest heavily tilted in favour of the latter.
ellknown former Punjabi and Hindi films actor Baldev Khosa has been fielded by Congress from the posh Versova (Mumbai) constituency challenging the sitting BJP MLA Bharti Lavekar. The three-time MLA Khosa — who acted in several Bollywood and ‘Pollywood’ (Punjabi) films in the 1970-1980s — was a close associate of the late union minister and actor Sunil Dutt.
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