Battle lines were drawn for the crucial Andheri East bye-election to the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly with the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) and the government involving the BJP and rebel Shiv Sena faction engaged in an eyeball-to-eyeball political conflict.
While the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) has fielded Rutuja Latke, the BJP has put up Murji Patel, who also have the backing of the Balasahebanchi Shiv Sena headed by Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.
The two candidates will be filing their nomination papers today, which is the last day for submitting papers.
The election to this seat of Mumbai has been necessitated following the death of two-time MLA of Shiv Sena, Ramesh Latke, who passed away following a heart attack on 11 May while he was on a trip to Dubai.
In the 2019 polls, the late Latke had defeated Patel, who had contested as an Independent, a rebel BJP candidate. Latke consolidated 62,773 votes while Patel was at the 2nd position with 45,808 votes and Amin Jagdish Kutty of the Congress was No. 3 with 27,951 votes. Before 2014 and 2019, the seat was represented by Suresh Shetty of the Congress.
It is practically a fight between the MVA and BJP, which will have the support of the Shinde-faction.
The Andheri East seat falls under the Mumbai North West Lok Sabha constituency, which is now represented by veteran politician Gajanan Kirtikar, who is part of Thackeray-group.
Published 14 October 2022, 04:50 IST