Friends to foes, foes to friends in Maha’s poll fray
MUMBAI: With parties breaking up and new alliances forming, Maharashtra is seeing head-spinning political realignments in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections where one-time colleagues have become rivals, and enemies have become allies.
An illustration of this was on display at Union minister Amit Shah’s rally in Nanded on Thursday where former chief minister Ashok Chavan and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Pratap Patil Chikhalikar shared the stage.
Chikhalikar, then the MLA of undivided Shiv Sena from Loha in Latur district, joined the BJP in 2019 and went on to defeat sitting Congress MP Ashok Chavan from Nanded, a Congress bastion, in the ensuing Lok Sabha elections.
Modi, at a campaign rally then, had targeted Chavan over the Adarsh society scam, while then chief minister Devendra Fadnavis had said Chavan was a dealer and not a leader. Chavan joined the BJP in February this year, and became its Rajya Sabha member. He is now campaigning for Chikhalikar and other BJP candidates in the Marathwada region.
Shrirang Barne of the Shiv Sena defeated Parth Pawar, NCP leader Ajit Pawar’s son, in the Maval Lok Sabha constituency in 2019. It was the first time a member of Sharad Pawar’s extended family tasted electoral defeat.
Come 2024, and Ajit Pawar -- who parted ways with his uncle to join hands with the BJP last year -- and his Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) are campaigning for Barne. On his part, Barne no longer owes allegiance to Uddhav Thackeray; he is now with the Shiv Sena led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. Ajit Pawar is now Shinde’s deputy in the state government.
Ajit Pawar is said to have persuaded Amol Kolhe, a popular television and film actor who was then with the undivided Shiv Sena, to cross over to the NCP and contest against sitting Shiv Sena MP Shivajirao Adhalrao-Patil in Shirur Lok Sabha constituency in 2019. Kolhe defeated Adhalrao-Patil.
Kolhe is now with the Sharad Pawar-led NCP (SP). In the seat-sharing arrangement of the ruling BJP-Shiv Sena-NCP ‘Mahayuti’ alliance, Shirur seat went to Ajit Pawar, and with the intention of defeating Kolhe, he inducted Adhalrao Patil into the NCP. Now Ajit Pawar would be campaigning against Kolhe, his former protege.
In Mumbai South-Central constituency, Rahul Shewale, two-time MP of the undivided Shiv Sena, is pitted against Anil Desai of the Shiv Sena (UBT). Shewale joined the Shinde-led Shiv Sena when the party split in 2022.
Desai, a close aide of Uddhav Thackeray, is largely known as a backroom warrior.