During the elections, it is common for leaders to change parties and become part of a different party. Nonetheless, there is a possible change in the leadership of the Maharashtra government under Mahayuti. In this case, five BJP members have joined forces with other Mahayuti partners to ensure a nomination, while respecting the alliance’s agreement on dividing seats.
Examining these changes reveals that all the defectors who switched to BJP’s coalition partners have been given tickets for the upcoming state assembly polls scheduled for November 20. These candidates have sided with either Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena or Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
The establishment is viewed as an “internal arrangement” within the current alliance to guarantee that the best candidate is chosen without breaching the allocated number of seats for each partner.
Nilesh Rane, son of ex-chief minister and Union minister Narayan Rane, recently switched to the Shiv Sena and will run for the Kudal-Sawantwadi assembly seat from their ticket, previously given to the Shiv Sena.
Rane, previously a member of Congress and now with the BJP since 2019, will be up against current UBT MLA Vaibhav Naik, who strongly opposes the Rane family. The Shiv Sena (UBT) is a part of the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance.
Four additional members of the BJP have switched to the NCP and are set to compete from their designated constituencies. On Friday, in Mumbai, Maharashtra two BJP leaders from Sangli – ex-MP Sanjaykaka Patil and local BJP leader Nishikant Bhosale Patil – switched to the NCP in a ceremony attended by party head Ajit Pawar and state president Sunil Tatkare.
Shortly after they became members, the NCP declared them as their candidates – Nishikant for the Islampur assembly seat and Sanjay Kaka for the Tasgaon constituency. Sanjay Kaka is facing off against Rohit Patil from the NCP(SP) party led by Sharad Pawar. Rohit, the son of the deceased NCP leader RR Patil, is running in an election for the first time. Nishikant is competing against Jayant Patil, the incumbent MLA and state president of NCP (SP).
Following his enrollment in NCP, Nishikant mentioned that he departed from BJP upon orders from Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. Nishikant explained that he switched from BJP to NCP due to NCP winning the Islampur assembly seat. I am confident that I will emerge victorious in the Islampur constituency election as a candidate of the NCP. Nishikant ran as an independent candidate in the 2019 assembly elections from this constituency and came in second place.
Also on Friday, Prataprao Patil Chikhlikar, a BJP leader from Nanded district, switched to the NCP and will run for the Loha assembly seat. The ex-Nanded MP has served as an MLA from Loha twice. On Wednesday, Raj Badole, who used to be a state minister for BJP, switched to NCP. He is scheduled to run as the party’s nominee in the Arjuni-Morgaon assembly seat, a position he has held twice but failed to win in the 2019 elections.