By ians,
Mumbai : Deepak Shinde, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate for the Sangli Lok Sabha seat, Wednesday withdrew his candidature in favour of Ajit Ghorpade, a rebel candidate who is Congress legislator from Kavathe-Mahankal.
The Congress’s official nominee is sitting MP, Pratik Patil, the grandson of late former Maharashtra chief minister Vasantrao Patil.
BJP national general secretary Gopinath Munde said in Beed that the party decided to withdraw Shinde’s candidature since it wanted to give a tough fight to the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) alliance in western Maharashtra.
Western Maharashtra is considered the traditional bastion of the two parties, tempting the BJP to take advantage of the rebel Congress candidate to upstage the Congress-NCP there.
The Congress ticket for the Sangli seat witnessed a bitter tussle between the Patil family and that of State Co-Operation Minister Patangrao Kadam of the Congress who was trying for the party nomination in favour of his son, Vishwajeet.
In another development, the Samajwadi Party decided not to field Farhan Azmi from the Mumbai South Lok Sabha constituency.
Farhan is the son of state party president Abu Asim Azmi, who is contesting from Mumbai North-West.
Don-turned-politician and sitting legislator Arun Gawli had decided to withdraw his candidature in favour of Congress candidate Milind Deora who is contesting from Mumbai South.