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Lok Sabha elections 2019: Big names to go head-to-head in high-profile western Maharashtra fights
Union minister Anant Geete, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s state chief, Raosaheb Danve, and NCP lawmaker Supriya Sule, are among 279 candidates in the fray.
Polling will be held for 14 out of Maharashtra’s 48 Lok Sabha seats in the third phase of national elections on Tuesday. Eight of these constituencies are in Western Maharashtra, which is considered to be a Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Congress stronghold.
Union minister Anant Geete, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s state chief, Raosaheb Danve, and NCP lawmaker Supriya Sule, are among 279 candidates in the fray.
Over 25.7 million people are eligible to vote.
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The constituencies going to the polls include Baramati, Pune, Kolhapur, Ahmednagar. The rest of the 17 Lok Sabha seats in the state will go to the polls on April 29. So far, polling has been held for 17 seats in the first two phases in Maharashtra.
Experts expect mixed results in the state, where the BJP and Shiv Sena won 40 out of the 48 seats in 2014. “The reports coming from different areas of the state are indicating a changed scenario. Comparing today’s situation in the state, there is no [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi wave and thus the BJP-Sena will not be able to repeat their performance. On the other hand, the Congress-NCP will perform better than the last elections,” said Prakash Bal, a political analyst. The Congress and NCP won seven seats in 2014.
In Baramati, Sule is seeking re-election. She is up against BJP’s Kanchan Kul. Sule won the last election by a margin of over 69,000 votes. Her margin of victory was over 3.36 lakh in 2009.
NCP chief and Sule’s father, Sharad Pawar, has been a six-term Parliament member from Baramati.
In Madha, NCP’s Sanjay Shinde is facing BJP’s Ranjitsinh Naik Nimbalkar. NCP’s Parliament member Vijaysinh Mohite Patil has declared his support for Nimbalkar. Patil wanted the seat for his son, Ranjitsinh, but NCP refused to give him a ticket.
The NCP’s Sangram Jagtap is up against BJP’s Sujay Vikhe Patil, who is the son of Congress leader Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, in Ahmednagar.
Geete is pitted against the NCP’s Sunil Tatkare in Raigad. He had defeated Tatkare in 2014 by a thin margin of 2,110 votes. Geete is a six-term parliament member.