Barely a month after joining active politics, Supriya Sule, the only child of NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, has been made the party's Rajya Sabha nominee for the September 18 bye-election from Maharashtra.
38-year-old Sule would file her nomination on Tuesday, party general secretary DP Tripathi said amid expectations that she would have a smooth sailing.
He said the decision was taken by Pawar after talking to senior leaders, including Union Minister Praful Patel, who had a meeting with Congress President Sonia Gandhi in this regard.
The meeting suggested that the Congress would back the nomination of Sule for the bye-election, scheduled on September 18. The bypoll was necessitated by the death of NCP leader Vasant Chavan.
Sule, who joined active politics on July 17 by enrolling herself as an active member of the party founded by her father, has been involved in development work for backward classes and women's self-help groups.
Earlier this year, she had criticised the Congress-NCP led state government for neglecting fund allocation for ashramshalas (residential schools in under-developed areas).
The last Rajya Sabha bypoll from the state a couple of months back had witnessed a lot of bad blood between NCP and Congress with Pawar's party supporting industrialist Rahul Bajaj contesting as an Independent against Congress nominee Avinash Pandey.
{{/usCountry}}The last Rajya Sabha bypoll from the state a couple of months back had witnessed a lot of bad blood between NCP and Congress with Pawar's party supporting industrialist Rahul Bajaj contesting as an Independent against Congress nominee Avinash Pandey.
{{/usCountry}}Sule is being brought to national politics at a time when her cousin Ajit Pawar is a senior cabinet minister in Maharashtra. She has always been insisting that he was not a rival.