Seven sitting MPS in Shinde Sena’s first list of 8 candidates

AMID GROWING disquiet between the ruling allies Shiv Sena and BJP over seat-sharing in the state, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde Thursday released his party’s first list of eight candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

While the Shinde Sena renominated seven sitting MPS, it dropped Krupal Tumane’s name from Ramtek constituency and nominated former Congress MLA Raju Parve, who recently joined the party.

The eight constituencies of Maharashtra for which Sena announced its candidates are — Mumbai South Central (Rahul Shewale), Kolhapur (Sanjay Mandalik), Shirdi (Sadashiv Lokhande), Buldhana (Prataprao Jadhav), Hingoli (Hemant Patil), Maval (Shrirang Barne), Ramtek (Raju Parve) and Hatkanangale (Dhairyasheel Mane).

While the absence of Kalyan constituency from the first list, from where shin de’ s son sh rik ant is the sitting mp, came as a big surprise, the party also did not announce its candidate for Thane— the home turf of Shinde.

Among other notable decisions were the absence of candidature of Bhavana Gawali, a fivetime MP from Yavatmal -Washim constituency. The party has also not declared the candidates for South Mumbai, and Nashik and Palghar constituencies which the Sena had won in 2019 LS polls.

The Thane, Kalyan, Palghar, Nashik and Ratnagiri Sindhudurg seats have become the bone of contention in the ruling alliance since BJP as well as Ajit Pawar-led NCP is vying to contest from those constituencies.

While BJP is learnt to be pushing its claim to contest from Kalyan, Thane, Palghar and Ratnagiri-sindhudurg, sources said that BJP is also opposing Sena's bid to renominate sitting MPS Hemant Godse and Bhavana G aw ali fro mn as hi kan dy a vat mal respectively.