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Congress MLC Pradnya Satav joins BJP after resigning her seat
Pradnya Satav was first elected to the legislative council after the death of her husband, Congress’s Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Satav, in 2021
MUMBAI: Congress legislator Pradnya Satav on Thursday resigned from the Maharashtra legislative council and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the party’s Nariman Point office in Mumbai.
Satav, 49, was first elected to the legislative council on a Congress ticket after the death of her husband, Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Satav, in 2021. She was re-elected to the legislative council in 2024, and her term was to end in July 2030.
Satav hails from the Other Backward Classes in the Marathwada region’s Hingoli district.
Her exit from the Congress amid the local body elections is a setback to the Congress. Also, her husband Rajeev had been close to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and was considered part of his inner circle.
Before heading to the BJP office, Satav resigned from the primary membership of the Congress and later handed over her resignation as a legislative council member to the legislature secretariat.
Speaking after joining the BJP in the presence of state party chief Ravindra Chavan and revenue minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule, Satav said she was making the switch for the development of her area and on the insistence of her workers.
“The state is on a development spree under the leadership of chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. We wanted to be part of the development and my workers were of a similar opinion. There are hundreds of my workers in Hingoli, who want to join BJP, and I would request the CM to spare us time in Hingoli for their joining,” she said.
Satav said that she had been working in Hingoli for the last 20 years along with her late husband and mother-in-law Rajani Satav and enjoyed the support of the workers.
Congress leader and former Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole said Satav’s decision was unfortunate.
“I do not know what the allure behind her defection is, but we will discuss this in our meeting of the state union next week. There is infighting in every party, even the BJP is not an exception to it. If she had the political acumen, she should have proven it during her terms in the council,” he said.
There is no word if the BJP will renominate her to the legislative council.
In 2029, she is expected to contest the Kalamnuri assembly seat in Hingoli, which was won by the Shiv Sena lawmaker Santosh Bangar in 2024. Her husband, Rajeev, had wrested the seat from the Shiv Sena in 2009 before winning the Hingoli Lok Sabha seat in 2014.
