The Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) on Wednesday released its first list of candidates for the upcoming Assembly elections in Maharashtra. The list of 65 candidates included former minister Aaditya Thackeray, who will contest from his present seat in central Mumbai’s Worli.
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.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition comprising the Uddhav Thackeray-led faction, the Nationalist Congress Party group led by Sharad Pawar and the Congress agreed to contest 85 seats each in the Maharashtra Assembly elections. The negotiations for the remaining seats were still on
The Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) was the first constituent of the alliance to release a list of candidates. The Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) are yet to release their lists.
Apart from Aaditya Thackeray, his cousin and Yuva Sena leader Varun Sardesai has been fielded from the Bandra (East) constituency in the city. The Yuva Sena is the youth wing of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray).
The party has fielded Kedar Dighe to contest against Chief Minister and Shiv Sena chief Eknath Shinde from the Kopri-Panchpakhadi seat in Thane.
Kedar Dighe is the nephew of the late Anand Dighe, who was a leader in the undivided Shiv Sena and considered to be Shinde’s political mentor.
In central Mumbai’s Mahim constituency, the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) listed Mahesh Sawant, who will take on Sada Sarvankar from Shinde’s faction of the Shiv Sena and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena’s Amit Thackeray.
Amit Thackeray is the son of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray.
In the Thane city seat, the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) has named former MP Rajan Vichare as its candidate. Party leader Satyajit Patil will be contesting from Shahuwadi in the Kolhapur district.
Former MP Unmesh Patil, who joined the party after the Bharatiya Janata Party denied him a ticket in the recent Lok Sabha elections, was fielded from Chalisgaon in Jalgaon.
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 undivided Nationalist Congress Party won 54 seats while its ally, the Congress, won 44 seats.
After the poll results, the Uddhav 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 Uddhav Thackeray and the other by Shinde who became the chief minister.
A year later, Ajit Pawar, along with several Nationalist Congress 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.
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