Two Congress turncoats, Fadnavis’ PA among 25 in BJP’s third list
The BJP on Monday released its third list of 25 candidates for the Maharashtra Assembly poll, giving tickets to two Congress turncoats and the personal assistant of Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis.
Jitesh close aide of ex-cm chavan
- Jitesh Antapurkar, who won a bypoll in 2021 on a Congress ticket and is considered close to ex-CM Ashok Chavan, has been nominated from Deglur.
- Archana Patil-Chakurkar, daughter-in-law of Congress veteran Shivraj Patil, has been fielded from the Latur City seat. She had joined the BJP in March this year.
The BJP, so far, has announced candidates for 146 seats. Polls to the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly will take place on November 20.
Jitesh Antapurkar, who won a bypoll in 2021 on a Congress ticket and is considered close to former CM Ashok Chavan, has been nominated from Deglur. Chavan had left the Congress recently and joined the BJP, which made him a Rajya Sabha MP.
Archana Patil-Chakurkar, daughter-in-law of Congress veteran and former Lok Sabha Speaker Shivraj Patil, has been fielded from the Latur City seat. She had joined the BJP from the Congress in March this year.
Sumit Wankhede, who has served as Fadnavis’s personal assistant for several years, will be the BJP’s candidate from the Arvi Assembly constituency. Incidentally, the BJP had given Fadnavis’ former PA Abhimanyu Pawar a ticket from Ausa in 2019. Pawar had won at the time.
Later, Shreekant Bharatiya was made an MLC by the party. Borivali BJP MLA Sunil Rane has been replaced with Sanjay Upadhyay, while MLC Praveen Datke has been fielded from the Nagpur Central seat.
