Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: Taking place in the shadow of the assembly elections in Maharashtra is another important political battle between Congress and BJP — the bypoll for the Nanded Lok Sabha seat.
Both camps have said they’re confident of a win in the Nov 20 bypoll. Congress has fielded Ravindra Chavan for the seat, which was vacated after the death of his father Vasant Chavan on Aug 26. The party is banking on a sympathy wave. BJP has sent in its “grassroots candidate” Santukrao Hambarde, who holds substantial sway among the electorate here.
The bypoll also offers former chief minister Ashok Chavan an opportunity to regain some lost ground. In the LS polls, BJP was defeated from the seat soon after he had joined the party.
Chavan’s name was also doing the rounds earlier as the candidate for the Nanded bypoll, but he denied the rumours, stating that his daughter Sreejaya was already in the fray from Bhokar assembly seat and that it would be inappropriate for the father-daughter duo to contest from Nanded district. Besides Chavan, Ajit Gopchade, the Rajya Sabha member of BJP who hails from Nanded, is also expected to rally behind the party’s candidate for the Nanded bypoll.
Pratap Patil Chikhalikar, who won the 2019 LS poll for Nanded seat as a BJP candidate, defeated Ashok Chavan but lost the last one to Vasant Chavan (by a margin of over 59,000 votes). He was also interested in fighting the bypoll but BJP leadership did not consider Chikhalikar with internal surveys reportedly going against him. Chikhalikar eventually joined NCP led by Ajit Pawar and is now contesting the assembly poll from Loha in Nanded, which he has represented twice as an MLA.
BJP’s Santukrao Hambarde is the party’s district president for Nanded. Interestingly, he is the elder brother of sitting Congress MLA from Nanded South, Mohan Hambarde, who is again in the poll fray for Nanded South. The younger brother has already accused BJP of triggering a rift in his family.
Hambarde said the outcome of the Lok Sabha elections in Marathwada, in which Mahayuti lost seven out of the eight seats from the region, including Nanded, was a temporary setback. He said the party will make a strong comeback in the Nanded bypoll.
“BJP has again come to power after the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and people of Nanded want their MP to be part of the ruling alliance. Instead of a sympathy wave for the Congress candidate, it’s the urge to join PM Narendra Modi that will prevail in Nanded,” he told TOI.
Congress’s Chavan said “money power” will once again be routed.