Shiv Sena has decided not to field a candidate against late Bharatiya Janata Party leader Gopinath Munde’s daughter Pankaja as a mark of respect to the leader who was one of the chief architects of the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance. On the last day of filing nominations, the party fielded 286 candidates for the 288 assembly constituencies in the state.
The party also chose to support the candidature of mafia don Arun Gawli’s daughter Geeta in the Byculla constituency and fielded no candidate against Geeta who is currently a corporator in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.
Both moves from the party are on expected lines as Munde was quite close to late Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray. It is also being seen as a political move as Pankaja is being pushed as the CM candidate in BJP by her supporters who believe her father was given a raw deal during Nitin Gadkari’s regime as party president. Pankaja took out a Sangharsh Yatra in a bid to garner mass support for her leadership and received good response, reminiscent of her father who had took out a similar yatra in the 90s that led to change of guard in Maharashtra.
On the other hand, the party also chose to offer support to mafia don Arun Gawli’s daughter Geeta from Byculla constituency. Gawli himself had been a legislator before he was jailed in an extortion case. Sena’s support of both Gawli and another mafia don Amar Naik has been well documented. In an interview decades ago, late Bal Thackera had rather famously commented, “If you have Dawood, we have Gawli.” Amar Naik’s wife Neeta had also been a Sena corporator who was gunned down a few years ago. Sena and Gawli fell out briefly as the latter chose to form a party called Akhil Bharatiya Sena and even managed to get elected a few corporators in BMC.
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