Mumbai: Ahead of the Maharashtra Assembly elections, the Maharashtra BJP unit faced a major setback as former Minister and senior leader Harshvardhan Patil joined the Sharad Pawar-led NCP faction on Monday, October 7.
Harshvardhan Patil had announced on Friday that he will join Sharad Pawar’s NCP faction after quitting the BJP. He is expected to contest from the Indapur seat as an NCP (SCP) candidate in the upcoming Assembly election.
Today's Rate
Sat 21 Dec. 2024
He said that he met Sharad Pawar at his residence in Mumbai on Thursday where Baramati MP Supriya Sule was also present. “During our one-and-a-half-hour meeting, Pawar said that he has reviewed the Indapur constituency and made me an offer to join his party. I told him that I would decide after discussing it with my supporters in Indapur. That discussion took place on Friday and I have joined Sharad Pawar’s NCP,” Patil said.
After the Lok Sabha election, Patil urged the BJP leadership to decide about his nomination for the Indapur seat, but, according to him, Mahayuti leaders decided to keep the seat with Ajit Pawar’s party.
“I recently spoke with Fadnavis for nearly two hours where he told me that the Indapur seat will go to the sitting MLA. He offered me other political options. Though they may be beneficial at a personal level, politically it was not acceptable considering the faith my supporters have in me. Therefore, I decided to quit the party,” Patil said.
The former Cooperatives Minister said that other BJP office-bearers in Indapur tehsil have tendered their resignations and will join NCP (SCP) with him. Patil said. Baramati and Indapur neighbouring tehsils have witnessed political rivalry between the Pawars and Patils over the decades.
Harshvardhan Patil represents a politically strong family from Indapur tehsil and has been a minister in successive governments from 1995 to 2014 His political career nosedived in the 2014 Assembly election when he was in the Congress and was defeated by the united NCP’s Datta Bharne; in 2019, he joined the BJP but was again defeated by Bharne in the Assembly poll.
Patil has been trying to recover lost ground in the Assembly segment before the 2024 Assembly poll but his political equations were upset when the NCP split and the Ajit Pawar faction joined the Mahayuti Government. This led to a dispute between Patil and Bharne, the sitting NCP MLA, over the Indapur seat which escalated during the Lok Sabha campaign.
Deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis travelled to Indapur to convince Patil to campaign for Ajit Pawar’s wife, Sunetra, for the Baramati LS seat; Indapur comes under the Baramati constituency.
