LS polls: Uddhav Thackeray fields 2 women to take on bigwigs in Thane, Palghar

Mumbai: The Shiv Sena (UBT) on Wednesday released the names of four Lok Sabha candidates, including two women, who would lock horns with political heavyweights in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.

SS (UBT) President and former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray made the announcement of the nominees for the four seats in different parts of the state, taking the total of its candidates to 21 so far in the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance.

They include -- Vaishali Darekar-Rane for Kalyan (Thane district) who will grapple with the sitting two-term MP Dr. Shrikant E. Shinde, an orthopaedic surgeon. He is the son of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, and a prospective LS candidate of the ruling MahaYuti-Shiv Sena.

In 2009 LS polls, Darekar-Rane had unsuccessfully contested Kalyan constituency as a Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) candidate against the (undivided) Shiv Sena's Anand P. Paranjpe, who won and is currently with the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party.

Similarly, in Palghar (ST) constituency, the party has nominated Bharti Kamdi, a grassroots activist working with the party since the 1990s and enjoying a good reputation among the people there.

Kamdi will be pitted against the veteran MahaYuti-Shiv Sena leader and ex-minister Rajendra Gavit, who won the LS by-election (2018), and then the general elections in 2019.

Incidentally, for both the Kalyan and Palghar (ST) constituencies, seat-sharing talks are still continuing among the MahaYuti allies, Shiv Sena-BJP-NCP. Uddhav Thackeray has also field a local party leader Satyajit Patil to contest the Hatkanangle LS seat in Kolhapur district, where ruling Shiv Sena's Dhairyasheel S. Mane is the sitting MP.

From Jalgaon, the SS (UBT) has named Karan Pawar in place of the expected candidature to sitting BJP MP Unmesh B. Patil -- who crossed over to the Thackeray-led party today (April 3) -- after he was sidelined for a BJP ticket this LS elections.

On his part, Patil has extended his full support to his close associate Pawar, who is a former president of the Parole Municipal Council in Jalgaon district.