Former Home Minister Anil Deshmukh.
Credit: X/@AnilDeshmukhNCP
Mumbai: In a dramatic development, NCP (SP) supremo Sharad Pawar’s close aide and former Home Minister Anil Deshmukh has decided to stay away from contesting the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly polls.
Deshmukh (74), a stalwart from Vidarbha, is a five-time sitting MLA from Katol seat in Nagpur district.
Deshmukh’s son Salil Deshmukh would instead contest the Katol seat.
The BJP is yet to declare the candidate from Katol.
Salil was prepared to file his nomination, but the family postponed the event to Tuesday because there was a little time at hand to reach the election office on Monday.
Deshmukh won the election in 1995 as an Independent and then in 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2019 on the ticket of undivided NCP. However, he lost the 2014 polls to nephew Ashish Deshmukh, who was with the BJP.
Ashish is son of former Maharashtra Congress President and former minister Ranjeet Deshmukh.
However, Ashish left BJP to join Congress and in 2019, unsuccessfully contested against BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis. However, he then joined the BJP ahead of Lok Sabha polls.
Ashish is now contesting the Saoner seat for the BJP against Anuja Kedar, the five-time MLA Sunil Kedar, who has been disqualified following a conviction and a five-year jail term in a criminal case. Anuja Kedar is granddaughter of former Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Speaker Sheshrao Wankhede, a former BCCI chief on whose memory the Wankhede Stadium of Mumbai has been named.
It may be mentioned, Deshmukh has penned ‘Diary of a Home Minister’, in which he had targeted his bete noire Fadnavis.
Assembly Elections 2024 | The Maharashtra Assembly polls will take place against the backdrop of a fractured political landscape in the western state where the Shiv Sena and NCP will be going up against the Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar factions, even as the BJP and Congress try to make their mark. Meanwhile, in Jharkhand, the JMM faces a new challenge after Hemant Soren's recent arrest and Champai, a longstanding party member, joining the BJP. The Haryana election resulted in a shock loss for Congress, which was looking to galvanize on the Lok Sabha poll performance, while J&K also saw the grand old party eventually stepping away from the cabinet, with Omar Abdullah's JKNC forming government. It remains to be seen if the upcoming polls help BJP cement its position further or provide a fillip to I.N.D.I.A. Check live updates and track the latest coverage, live news, in-depth opinions, and analyses only on Deccan Herald.
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