Gadkari, Goyal, Mungantiwar & Pankaja – BJP pitches its strongest in 1st Maharashtra list

Pankaja Munde instead of Pritam Munde, Piyush Goyal instead of Gopal Shetty, a third term for Nitin Gadkari and a push for Sudhir Mungantiwar to enter national politics.

In its first list of candidates for Maharashtra, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) gave nominations to some of its strongest names from the state, repeating most of the incumbents.

In its second list of candidates published Wednesday, the BJP announced 20 candidates from Maharashtra, which sends 48 MPs to the Lok Sabha.

Party sources say that the BJP’s seat-sharing deal with its allies in Maharashtra – the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) – is almost finalised with the Sena likely to get 13 seats, the NCP four and the BJP 31.

According to leaders from the BJP and the Shinde-led Shiv Sena, the constituencies from which the BJP has named its candidates are said to be the party’s undisputed seats.

“The 20 seats for which the BJP has named candidates are those where the party has sitting MPs. The seat sharing formula is also almost finalised by now, so we have no problem with the party naming its candidates for the seats it is anyway going to contest,” a sitting MP from the Shinde-led Sena said.

In the list of 20 candidates, the BJP has mostly repeated incumbents, dropping only five names – Pritam Munde from the Beed constituency, Gopal Shetty from Mumbai North, Manoj Kotak from Mumbai North East, Unmesh Patil from Jalgaon and Sanjay Dhotre from Akola.

While Pritam’s candidature has been given to her sister Pankaja, Dhotre’s candidature has gone to his son Anup.

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The Munde sisters

The Munde sisters – daughters of late BJP stalwart Gopinath Munde – were perceived to be sidelined within the BJP for the past more than five years. Former Union minister Gopinath Munde was instrumental in developing a strong Other Backward Classes (OBC) voter base for the BJP in Maharashtra.

Talks about the possible replacement of sitting Beed MP Pritam Munde with her sister Pankaja had been gaining ground over the past six months, though the latter had on a number of occasions said that she doesn’t intend to contest from her sister’s seat.

A BJP leader, however, told ThePrint that the party leadership thought Pankaja was a stronger candidate than her sister Pritam. Moreover, Pankaja’s turf, the assembly seat of Parli in the Beed district, is now disputed with the BJP’s tie up with the Ajit Pawar-led NCP, he added.

Pankaja had lost the seat in the 2019 assembly election to her cousin Dhananjay Munde, who is now part of the Ajit Pawar-led NCP and is also a minister in the Shinde-led Maharashtra government.

In September last year, a snubbed Pankaja had undertaken an eight-day pilgrimage of Maharashtra’s Shakti Peeths and jyotirlingas, addressing large crowds at each stop and meeting key leaders from across parties to boost her own political brand.

Homecoming for Piyush Goyal

The possibility of Gopal Shetty, two-time MP from the Mumbai North constituency, was also being talked about within the state’s BJP unit over the past few months.

Speaking to media persons, Shetty said, “It is not a small thing for someone to win elections seven times and gain the support of so many people. Whatever I have gained, I will keep it in my heart and mind and live my life.” Shetty was a two-term MLA and a three-time corporator in the Mumbai civic body before becoming an MP.

The BJP replaced Shetty with one of its strongest candidates – Piyush Goyal, a Union minister and leader of the house in the Rajya Sabha, who hails from Mumbai’s Sion neighbourhood and has seen political life from close quarters since his childhood.

His father Vedprakash Goyal was an active politician and served as Union shipping minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government and as the national treasurer for the BJP. His mother, Chandrakanta, was a three-term MLA.

The Goyal residence in Sion would always be abuzz with political activity, with the family known to host several tall BJP leaders when they were in Mumbai.

Sion is part of the Mumbai South Central constituency, on which the Shinde-led Shiv Sena has staked claim. In a message on social media platform X, Goyal conveyed his gratitude “as a Mumbaikar” to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP President J.P. Nadda and Maharashtra Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis.

As a Mumbaikar, I express my heartfelt gratitude to PM Shri @NarendraModi ji, Home Minister Shri @AmitShah ji, BJP National President Shri @JPNadda ji and Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra Shri @Dev_Fadnavis ji for my nomination as the Lok Sabha candidate from Mumbai North.…

— Piyush Goyal (मोदी का परिवार) (@PiyushGoyal)

Candidates for 4 of 10 Vidarbha seats

Of the 20 seats, for which the BJP announced candidates in Maharashtra, four are from Vidarbha. The region sends a total of 10 MPs to the Lok Sabha and is one of BJP’s strongholds in Maharashtra.

The BJP’s second list named two-time MP Nitin Gadkari, whose exclusion from the first list had drawn criticism from the Opposition. Gadkari, a minister in the Modi government, has so far stood out as one of the few leaders to campaign on his own name instead of PM Modi’s.

On other seats, the BJP has decided to repeat sitting MP Ramdas Tadas from Wardha, while nominating sitting MP Sanjay Dhotre’s son Anup from his constituency of Akola. The party has also fielded state cabinet minister Mungantiwar, who has been the state party president, from Chandrapur, which the Congress had won in 2019.

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