Mumbai: Congress to support Shiv Sena in Andheri East by-election

Congress party will support Shiv Sena led by Uddhav Thackeray in the Andheri East by-election. The announcement was made on Wednesday by state unit chief Nana Patole and former chief minister Ashok Chavan. NCP has already extended its support to Shiv Sena.

The by-election was necessitated following the death of Shiv Sena's sitting MLA Ramesh Latke in May. The by-election is slated for November 3. With support from NCP and Congress to Shiv Sena nominee, the three parties, which are the Maha Vikas Aghadi allies, are ready to jointly take on BJP, especially after the fall of the government following the rebellion staged by Eknath Shinde and others.

As reported by the Free Press Journal, Shiv Sena is expected to field Latke’s wife Rutuja while BJP is likely to nominate former corporator Murmu Patel who had contested as an independent but lost to Ramesh Latke in the 2019 assembly elections.

Patole said that Maha Vikas Aghadi was formed after the results of the 2019 assembly elections to keep the Bharatiya Janata Party out of power for the benefit of Maharashtra. The MVA government was in the state for two and a half years and took. many welfare decisions like farmer loan waiver. The government did the best work in the country during a great crisis like Corona. 

‘’However, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre misused the central probe agencies like ED CBI and toppled the MVA government by engineering defection of Shiv Sena MLAs. BJP's efforts to break the MVA were not successful, so they broke the Shiv Sena party. In this battle against the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Congress Party is firmly standing with the Shiv Sena as the MVA partner and it will not field its candidate in the Andheri East Assembly by-election,’’ said Patole. He added that the party leaders and workers will work with full strength to elect the Shiv Sena candidate.