The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday released its first list of candidates for the upcoming Assembly elections in Maharashtra. The list of 99 names included Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who will be contesting from Nagpur West – a seat he has represented since 2009.
Polling for the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly will take place in a single phase on November 20. The counting of votes will take place on November 23, alongside that of the Jharkhand elections.
Apart from Fadnavis, other names listed included state BJP chief Chandrashekhar Bawankule, who will be contesting from Kamthi in the Nagpur district and state minister Sudhir Mungantiwar from the Ballarpur constituency in the Chandrapur district.
Sreejaya Chavan, the daughter of former Chief Minister Ashok Chavan, has been fielded by the party from Bhokar in the Nanded district. Sreejaya Chavan switched from the Congress to the BJP ahead of the recent Lok Sabha polls.
The list also included party leaders Ram Kadam (Ghatkopar West), Shweta Mahale Patil (Chikli), Nitesh Rane (Kankavli) and Ashish Shelar (Vandre West).
Former Union minister Raosaheb Danve’s son Santosh has been fielded from Bhokardan.
The BJP is part of the Mahayuti alliance in the state, which also comprises the Chief Minister Eknath Shinde-led faction of the Shiv Sena and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party group.
The alliance has not announced its seat-sharing arrangement for the Assembly elections.
The Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi, which includes former Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena faction, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party group led by party founder Sharad Pawar, is also yet to announce its seat-sharing pact.
In the 2019 Maharashtra polls, the BJP won 105 seats in the Assembly. The undivided Shiv Sena, its ally at the time, won 56 seats.
The united Nationalist Congress Party won 54 seats while its ally, the Congress, won 44 seats.
After the poll results, the Thackeray-led undivided Shiv Sena quit its alliance with the BJP and formed the state government along with a united Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress.
The Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition government collapsed in June 2022 when a group of Shiv Sena MLAs led by Shinde rebelled and formed a government with the BJP. This split the Shiv Sena into two factions, with one led by Thackeray and the other by Shinde who became the chief minister.
A year later, Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar, along with several party MLAs, also joined the ruling coalition. This split the Nationalist Congress Party, with one faction supporting Sharad Pawar and the other backing his nephew Ajit Pawar.
In the Lok Sabha elections this year, the first major polls in the state since these developments, the Maha Vikas Aghadi won 30 of the 48 seats in the state. The remaining 18 seats were won by the ruling Mahayuti alliance.
The two alliances each secured a 43% vote share in the general election.
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