Who Is Shashikant Shinde? Meet New State President Of NCP(SP)

Former minister and MLA Jayant Patil's resignation as state president has brought the spotlight onto the new leadership in Sharad Pawar's NCP. MP Sharad Pawar has appointed Shashikant Shinde as the new state president, assigning him the responsibility of ensuring wins in the forthcoming local body elections.

Who is Shashikant Shinde?

He is a politician from Koregaon in Satara district.

He is a commerce graduate and is known as an influential leader of the Mathadi Kamghar. He was born on 19 October 1963. His father is Jaywantrao Shinde, and his mother is Kausalya Shinde.

Shashikant Shinde started taking an active part in the social and political field at a very young age. In 1999, he contested for the first time from the Javali Assembly constituency and won by a margin of 12,000 votes.

From 2009 to 2014, he was the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MLA from the Koregaon Assembly Constituency. In this election, he defeated Shalini Tai Patil. Shashikant Shinde has represented Javali twice and Koregaon twice as an MLA. However, in the 2019 Assembly elections, he had to face defeat to Shiv Sena's Mahesh Shinde in the Koregaon seat.

After this, Shashikant Shinde contested the election from the Satara Lok Sabha seat as a candidate of Mahavikas Aghadi. He was in the fray against Chhatrapati Udayanraje Bhosle, the candidate of the BJP grand coalition, from the Nationalist Congress (Sharad Pawar faction), but he had to face defeat. Again in the Assembly elections, he had to face defeat against Mahesh Shinde from Koregaon. Currently, Shashikant Shinde is a member of the Maharashtra Legislative Council.

Former Maharashtra minister and MLC Shashikant Shinde was on Tuesday named the new president of the state NCP (SP) unit, replacing Jayant Patil.

Shinde's appointment was announced by NCP (SP) president Sharad Pawar at the party's general body meeting here, NCP (SP) spokesperson Clyde Crasto told PTI.