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Journalism of Courage
With the auspicious ‘Guru Pushpya Amrit Yog’ falling on Thursday, politicians in Maharashtra are rushing to file their nominations for the upcoming Assembly elections even before their names have been officially announced by their parties.
While the Congress and the NCP (SP) are yet to officially declare a single candidate for the Assembly elections, all other parties, including the BJP, the Shiv Sena, the NCP, the Shiv Sena (UBT), the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) and other smaller parties have declared the names of a few candidates.
‘Guru Pushpya Amrit Yog’ is considered an auspicious time to perform religious rituals, begin new endeavours, and seek blessings from spiritual teachers. Leaders cutting across party lines are set to file their nominations on Thursday.
In western Maharashtra, NCP (SP) leaders Jayant Patil, the state party chief, and Rohit Patil will file their nominations in their constituencies in Sangli and Harshvardhan Patil will file his nomination from the Indapur Assembly segment in the presence of party working president Supriya Sule.
Similarly, sitting MLA Sangram Thopte of the Congress will file his nomination from the Bhor Assembly seat in Pune district on Thursday in the presence of state Congress chief Nana Patole, Sule and Shiv Sena (UBT) leaders.
Others filing their nominations on Thursday are Jitendra Awhad of the NCP (SP), Aaditya Thackeray of the Shiv Sena (UBT), Chhagan Bhujbal, Narhari Zirwal, and Dhananjay Munde of the NCP, and Yashomati Thakur of the Congress.
“There is some confusion with the list of candidates so we will first share the Congress list with NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar and Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray to avoid confusion. There are some seats on which we will have discussions. The seat sharing has to be finalised today as the Congress’s Central Election Committee will meet on Friday,” state Congress chief Nana Patole said on Thursday.
Pune NCP (SP) chief Prashant Jagtap said that the party has given the go-ahead to certain candidates to file their nomination on this auspicious day. “Declaring the list of candidates is just for the convenience of the public and has nothing to do with the actual election process. Some political parties hand over the AB form [the documents prove a candidate has been approved by a political party and should be allotted its election symbol] to their candidate even before declaring the list,” he said.
Among those who have been declared as official candidates include ministers Chandrakant Patil of the BJP from Kothrud and Dilip Walse Patil of the NCP from Ambegaon, and BJP leader Sudhir Gadgil in Sangli.
Elections for the 288 Assembly seats in Maharashtra will be held on November 20 and votes will be counted on November 23.
