Maharashtra Polls: Ahead of the Maharashtra Assembly elections, all political parties are strategizing to secure victory. Amid this, the trend of switching parties continues.
In a significant move, BJP MP Narayan Rane's son, Nilesh Rane, has decided to join Chief Minister Eknath Shinde's party and contest the elections.
According to a PTI report, Nilesh Rane announced on Tuesday, October 22, that he would be joining Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena and will contest the Kudal Assembly seat.
Party sources revealed that under the seat-sharing formula within the ruling MahaYuti alliance, the Kudal constituency is allocated to Shiv Sena, which is why Nilesh is switching from BJP to Shiv Sena.
Vaibhav Naik of Shiv Sena (UBT) is the sitting MLA from Kudal. He is considered a long-time rival of Narayan Rane. Kudal Assembly constituency is a part of Narayan Rane's Lok Sabha constituency, Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg.
The nearby Kankavli Assembly constituency is represented by Nilesh's younger brother, Nitesh Rane, who is with the BJP. The BJP has once again fielded Nitesh Rane, the son of former Union Minister and prominent Konkan leader Narayan Rane, as its candidate for the Kankavli seat in Sindhudurg district.
Nilesh Rane was previously with Congress. He served as an MP from the Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg constituency from 2009 to 2014. In 2014, he joined the BJP but lost both the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
It is noteworthy that in its first list of 99 candidates, the BJP has retained 71 sitting MLAs, including key figures like Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis, BJP State President Chandrashekhar Bawankule, Assembly Speaker Rahul Narvekar, and ministers Girish Mahajan, Sudhir Mungantiwar, and Chandrakant Patil.
In the recent Lok Sabha elections, the BJP's seats dropped from 23 to just nine. In the 2019 Assembly elections, the BJP had contested 164 seats in alliance with its then-partner, the undivided Shiv Sena, and won 105 seats.
Voting for all 288 seats in Maharashtra will be held in a single phase on November 20, while the results will be declared on November 23.