Mumbai: The BJP suffered a major joilt on Tuesday, when its sitting MP Unmesh Patil of Jalgaon, who was denied the ticket by the party to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, first met Shiv Sena (UBT) spokesperson Sanjay Raut and later went to Matoshri to call on Uddhav Thackeray.
Indications are that the Shiv Sena (UBT) will field him in the prestigious Jalgaon constituency if only to spite its arch rival, the Shiv Sena (UBT). He will be the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) candidate. Patil is a political heavy weight and the denial of ticket has vastly angered him.
Patil claimed that he was a personal friend of Raut and there was no political significance to their meeting. But, there are no takers for his claim.
In 2019, Patil won with a margin of over four lakh votes . While he received 7.13 lakh votes, his immediate rival Gulabrao Deokar (NCP) got 3.02 lakh votes. In 2014, Patil was elected as an MLA from Chalisgaon and served as the chairman of the Maharashtra State Cooperative Sugar Factories Federation Limited from.
In the list of 20 candidates released two weeks ago, the BJP replaced Patil with Smita Wagh . She had served as the president of the BJP’s women’s wing before becoming a Legislative Council member in 2015. In the last Lok Sabha polls, too, she was in the reckoning for the Jalgaon seat, but Patil emerged as the party's choice.
Jalgaon is a BJP bastion, as the party has won all successive Lok Sabha elections here from 1999 to 2019. From 1991 to 1996, Gunwantrao Sarode represented Jalgaon. Y G Mahajan won in 1999 and 2004, Haribhau Jawale in 2007, and A T Patil in 2009 and 2014.
In between, Ulhas Vasudeo Patil of the Congress won the seat in 1998. Eknath Khadse was a major leader of the BJP form this district, but he quit the organisation accusing deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis of sidelining him. Khadse later joined the NCP led by Sharad Pawar.
