In an effort to keep its allies in good humour, the ruling BJP on Tuesday gave three out of total four seats to its partners — one seat each to the Shiv Sena, Rashtriya Samaj Paksha and Shiv Sangram, while it fielded its state Mahila Morcha president Smita Wagh for the fourth seat in the January 30 election to Maharashtra legislative Council.
However, the BJP failed to accommodate its another ally-the Swabhimani Shetkari Sangathana (SSS), a move that left the Raju Shetti-led party fuming. No wonder that SSS’ senior leader Sadabhau Khot, who was ticket aspirants, said that the decision not to give a nomination to the party could be because of the recent agitation by sugarcane growers. “The BJP has betrayed us. They gave seats to other allies but left us out... We will take a call on further action sometime next month,” Khot said.
The Ramdas Athavale-led RPI, another ally of the ruling BJP, was denied ticket to the State legislative Council. On his part, RPI leader Ramdas Kadam had conveyed to the BJP that he would not insist for a MlC slot provided he was accommodated at the Centre as a minister of state (MoS).
Tuesday being the last day for filing the nominations, Subhash Desai of the Shiv Sena, Shivsangram leader Vinayak Mete, Rashtriya Samaj Paksh’s Mahadev Jankar and BJP’s Smita Wagh filed papers for the January 30 polls.
Desai, a Shiv Sena heavyweight and industries minister in the BJP-Sena government, had lost to BJP’s Vidya Thakur in the Assembly elections, but was inducted as a Cabinet Minister last month after Sena joined the Government.
A section of BJP leaders is said to be unhappy over the nomination of Wagh. This is given that leaders in the aggrieved State BJP were expecting that either the state unit spokesperson Madhav Bhandari or BJP’s Mumbai spokesperson Shaina NC would be filed as the party nominee.
All the four BJP-backed nominees are expected to be elected unopposed as no other candidate is in the fray.The January 30 polls have been necessitated by the vacancies created by the exit of former Chief
Minister Prithviraj Chavan (Congress), Vinod Tawde, Ashish Shelar (both BJP), who were elected to the Assembly, and Vinayak Mete who was disqualified under the anti-defection law.While Chavan’s term in the Upper House was to end in 2016, the tenures of Tawde and Shelar were to end in 2020 and 2018 respectively.
