Another MLA Sulbha Khodke likely to leave Congress ahead of polls

Ahead of state elections, Congress MLA Sulbha Khodke is set to join the NCP, following two other MLAs who switched parties, raising political speculation.

Mumbai: In the run-up to the state assembly elections, one more Congress MLA is set to jump ship and likely to join Nationalist Congress Party led by deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar.

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Congress’s Amaravati MLA Sulbha Khodke is likely to join the NCP ahead of the election, party insiders revealed.

Khodke was part of the ‘Jan Sanman Yatra’ led by Ajit Pawar during its Amravati leg on Thursday. It has led to speculations even as she had skipped party meetings in the recent past too.

Khodke would be the third MLA to leave the opposition party after MLAs Jitesh Antapurkar and Zeeshan Siddique.

On Thursday, Ajit Pawar was in Amravati as part of NCP’s outreach program for the voters where he inaugurated a number of development works in the Amravati assembly constituency apart from explaining details of the several welfare schemes, especially for women. Khodke not only welcomed Pawar to Amravati but also remained present along with him for all the events.

“I am a Congress MLA. Ajit dada (Pawar) as deputy chief minister sanctioned a lot of funds for development works in my constituency. He came to launch all those development works. There is no political association with him as of now. I cannot say what is going to happen in the future,” she said in her response.

NCP is not new to her. She had represented the party as an MLA from Badnera assembly constituency back in between 2004-09. She lost the seat in 2009 against independent MLA Ravi Rana. In 2014, she contested the seat as a Congress MLA but lost to Rana once again. In 2019, she successfully contested the assembly poll from the Amravati seat. Her husband Sanjay Khodke shifted loyalty to Ajit Pawar during the split in NCP and is considered his confidante.

At a program held on September 1, Ajit Pawar as NCP president while asking the party workers to start preparations for contesting on 60 seats for the beginning also indicated Khodke’s induction in the party. “Considering the 54 seats the party had won in 2019, two independent MLAs and Congress MLAs such as Sulbha Khodke, Zeeshan Siddique and PWP MLA Shyamsundar Shinde our current strength goes up to 60 seats thus there is no issue in starting poll preparations on these many seats,” he told NCP workers.

On August 30, Congress expelled Antapurkar hours before he joined the BJP. On the same day, Congress declared the expelling of Zeeshan Siddique, who represents Vandre East assembly constituency. The first term MLA was seen as part of Pawar’s ‘Jan Sanman Yatra’ in Mumbai. His father and former Congress minister Baba Siddique joined NCP in February this year.