Rebel candidates entering the fray on the last day of filing nominations after they were denied tickets by respective party leaderships, who favoured last minute switchovers and relatives of prominent leaders in ticket-distribution, are set to tweak the outcome of the Maharashtra assembly elections.
The Congress, in particular, is facing rebellion in several prominent seats in Maharashtra in the wake of the decision to give party tickets to kith and kin of top political leaders besides switchovers from the Shiv Sena. Congress minister Sunil Deshmukh filed his nomination this afternoon as an independent from Amrawati after the seat, which he has been representing for the last ten years, was given to President Pratibha Patil?s son, Rajendra Shekhawat. Deshmukh, who unsuccessfully lobbied against Shekhawat in the capital until yesterday, is now being supported by the Republican Left Democratic Front.
The Congress, in fact, has clearly disregarded criticism that it had favoured close relatives of top leaders. Late on Friday night it awarded tickets to Amit Deshmukh, son of union heavy industries minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and Praniti Shinde, daughter of union power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde. The two will contest from the family pocketboroughs of Latur and Solapur respectively. The only prominent Congress leader who failed where others succeeded, was PCC chief Manikrao Thakre, who failed to get a ticket for his son Rahul in Yavatmal. In the Dadar seat (now Mahim), for instance, it chose to embrace senior Shiv Sena leader Sada Sarvankar who joined the Congress on Thursday after being denied a ticket by Sena president Uddhav Thackeray.