Rajendra Shekhawat is eyeing Amravati seat
The Congress leadership is likely to backtrack on its resolve of not giving tickets to the greenhorn kin of politicians to accommodate Rajendra Shekhawat, son of President Pratibha Patil, for the coming Maharashtra Assembly polls. Shekhawat is eyeing the Amravati seat, a Congress stronghold.
Batting in favour of Shekhawat, Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan today said: “It is a democratic country and every person has a right to contest elections.”
Chavan’s comments came after the Congress and its ruling partner in Maharashtra, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), today formally declared their seat-sharing arrangement. State Congress chief Manikrao Thakre, NCP leader and Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel and Chavan announced that the Congress and the NCP would contest in 174 and 114 seats, respectively, in the October 13 elections.
Earlier, the Congress was not in favour of giving tickets to new relatives of its high-profile leaders to curb criticisms of dynasty politics. But the situation turned out to be tricky after the President’s son jumped into the fray. To balance the various power circles in Maharashtra, the party high command may also decide to nominate Union heavy industries minister and former Maharashtra CM Vilasrao Deshmukh’s son Amit.
Apart from Patil’s son Shekhawat, at least a dozen other fresh candidates — relatives of top leaders — are lobbying to get Congress tickets. Deshmukh’s son Amit is eyeing a ticket from Latur, while Union power minister and another former Maharashtra CM Sushilkumar Shinde’s daughter Praniti is keen to contest from Solapur Central. Shinde’s son-in-law Raj Shroff is also in the race, trying to get a ticket from a Mumbai constituency. Former Union home minister Shivraj Patil’s daughter-in-law is also keen to contest the polls.
The decision to allow greenhorn relatives to contest in Maharashtra is likely to force the Congress leadership to allow similar concessions in Haryana as well. In Haryana too, the party had decided not to give any ticket to newcomers who are kin of party leaders.
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The alliance partners claimed the seats have also been identified for the two parties and a formal announcement of the candidates may come on Wednesday. “Due to the delimitation, the entire exercise of negotiating over seats had to be done from scratch. Most of the seats got changed,” Patel said, while explaining the delay in announcing the tie-up.
Thackeray also said that the two parties will jointly campaign and even issue a common manifesto. The partners, while distributing all 288 among themselves, invited other parties like RPI to join this alliance.
Both the Congress and the NCP claimed that some seats can be given to other allies from the quota of the two parties.