Eknath Khadse, Urmila Matondkar among Maharashtra’s MLC nominees

The Maharashtra government on Friday sent its 12 recommendations for members of the state legislative Council (MLC) to governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari.

The Maharashtra government on Friday sent its 12 recommendations for members of the state legislative Council (MLC) to governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari.

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“The Congress has recommended the names of Sachin Sawant, Muzaffar Hussain, Rajni Patil and Aniruddha Wankar; Nationalist Congress Party’s nominees are Eknath Khadse, Raju Shetti, Anand Shinde and Yashpal Bhinge; while the Sena has sent the names of Urmila Matondkar, Chandrakant Raghuvanshi, Vijay Karanjkar and Nitin Bangude Patil,” said a senior minister, requesting anonymity.

Each of the three ruling parties — Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress — have taken four seats each. Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government leaders, however, are not sure whether Koshyari, who has been locked in a fight with the government on several instances, will clear the list and nominate the 12 candidates to the Council

Twelve members to the upper house of the state legislature are nominated by the governor on the recommendation of the state government. These nominees are expected to be from different walks of life, although often ruling parties recommend their members or people associated with them. Most of the 12 legislators, who retired in June from the Upper house, were also politicians. The positions have been vacant since then as the state had not made any recommendations to the governor.

Barring a few, most of the candidates recommended by the government are politicians. Khadse, who recently joined NCP from BJP, Muzaffar Hussain, Sachin Sawant, Rajni Patil, Yashpal Bhinge, Chandrakant Raghuvanshi, Vijay Karanjkar and Nitin Patil are politicians. Raju Shetti is a politician, but is also a popular farmers’ leader. Urmila Matondkar is a Bollywood actor, Anand Shinde and Aniruddha Wankar are Marathi singers.

Three ministers from the MVA government — state transport minister Anil Parab from Shiv Sena, minority affairs minister Nawab Malik from NCP and medical education minister Amit Deshmukh from Congress — met the governor and submitted nominations in a sealed envelope to Koshyari on Friday evening.

“We have submitted 12 names in a sealed envelope along with an official request from chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and proposal cleared by the state cabinet. We have followed the process before nominating names to the governor,” said Parab, after meeting the governor at Raj Bhavan. “The appointment has already been delayed due to the pandemic. As names have been submitted now, we are hoping the governor will fulfill his responsibility by clearing the recommendations after scrutiny,” Malik said.

Bhinge and Wankar had contested the elections last year as candidates of Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) led by Prakash Ambedkar. Bhinge had contested the general elections from Nanded against Ashok Chavan, currently PWD minister in the MVA government. Chavan lost the polls by 40,148 votes against Pratap Chikhlikar of the BJP and Bhinge got 26,020 votes. Wankar contested the Assembly polls from Chandrapur and got 15,403 votes. Independent candidate Kishor Jorgewar won the polls against sitting BJP MLA Nanaji Shamkule.