Milind Deora vs Aaditya Thackeray and more: Big fights in the Maharashtra Assembly elections

Maharashtra goes to the polls today (November 20) to elect the 288-member Assembly. Over 4,000 candidates are in the fray, of which more than 2,000 are independent contenders.

The ruling Mahayuti alliance is facing off its main opposition the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) after the former’s underperformance in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year. The Assembly election results will be declared on November 23.

Let’s take a look at the major battles unfolding in the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections.

Maharashtra Assembly polls: Total candidates

Over 9.7 crore voters will decide the fate of 4,136 candidates fighting in the Maharashtra Assembly polls.

Among the Mahayuti partners, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded candidates on 149 seats, Shiv Sena led by Eknath Shinde is contesting 81 seats and the Ajit Pawar-headed Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has given tickets to candidates in 59 constituencies.

In the opposition MVA, the Congress has fielded 101 candidates, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) or Shiv Sena (UBT) has given tickets to 95 candidates and 86 candidates of NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) are in the fray.

There will be friendly contests between the allies on some seats.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has fielded 237 candidates and 17 candidates from the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) are also in the race.

Maharashtra Assembly polls: Key battles

Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde is trying to retain his Kopri-Pachpakhadi seat in Thane. The Shiv Sena leader is up against his late mentor Anand Dighe’s nephew, Kedar Dighe, who is contesting on a Shiv Sena (UBT) ticket.

Shinde has won the seat for three straight terms in 2009, 2014 and 2019. He was first elected as an MLA from Thane in 2004.

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis is the BJP candidate from Nagpur South West, which was carved out of the Nagpur West seat after delimitation in 2009. The constituency, which has been held by Fadnavis since 1999, is a BJP stronghold.

Fadnavis’ main rival is Congress candidate Praful Gudadhe-Patil. There are speculations that the BJP leader can return as chief minister if the Mahayuti forms the government again.

The NCP candidate Ajit Pawar is taking on his nephew Yugendra Pawar from the Pawar family bastion of Baramati. The deputy CM has won the seat for seven consecutive terms, while his nephew is making his electoral debut on an NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) ticket.

Ajit Pawar split his uncle Sharad Pawar-led NCP and joined hands with the Mahayuti alliance last July, taking oath as Deputy CM. In 2019, he won the Baramati Assembly seat on the ticket of the then undivided NCP against BJP’s Gopichand Kundlik Padalkar with a margin of over 1.65 lakh votes.

The Worli constituency in Mumbai will witness a high-stakes battle between Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray and Shiv Sena’s Rajya Sabha MP Milind Deora. It will be a three-cornered contest as the duo is facing a challenge from Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) candidate Sandeep Deshpande.

Deora is a former Congress MP, while Aaditya is the incumbent MLA from Worli. The Shiv Sena (UBT) leader had won the seat in the 2019 polls by a margin of 67,427 votes against the then-undivided NCP candidate Suresh Mane.

Maharashtra Congress president Nana Patole is in the fray from Sakoli against the BJP candidate Avinash Anandrao Brahmankar. The Congress leader had trounced the BJP’s Parinay Ramesh Fuke with a margin of 6,240 votes in the 2019 polls.

It is a hot contest in Mumbai’s Vandre (Bandra) East constituency as NCP’s Zeeshan Siddique takes on Uddhav Thackeray’s nephew Varun Sardesai. Siddique, the son of the late NCP leader Baba Siddique, had won the seat in 2019 on a Congress ticket.

Sardesai, the Shiv Sena (UBT) candidate, is vying to re-establish his party’s hold on the seat after Siddique defeated undivided Sena’s former mayor Vishwanath Mahadeshwar in the last Assembly elections by over 5,790 votes.

MNS candidate Trupti Sawant, a former Shiv Sena MLA from the constituency, has made it a triangular fight.

Senior NCP minister Chhagan Bhujbal is up against his former friend, Manikrao Shinde of the NCP (SP), from the Yeola Assembly constituency. In the 2019 polls, Bhujbal, the candidate of undivided NCP, had won the seat against undivided Shiv Sena’s Sambhaji Sahebrao Pawar.

Former Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik is the NCP candidate from the Mankhurd Shivaji Nagar constituency. Abu Asim Azmi of the Samajwadi Party (SP), an MVA ally, is trying to retain the seat against Malik and Shinde Sena’s Shivaji ‘Bullet’ Patil.

Maharashtra BJP president Chandrashekhar Bawankule is contesting from Kamptee, his home turf in the Vidarbha region. He won the seat thrice in 2004, 2009, and 2014. However, the three-term MLA was dropped in 2019.

Bawankule, the BJP’s Other Backward Class (OBC) face, is facing former Nagpur Zilla Parishad president Suresh Bhoyar in Kamptee. In 2019, BJP’s Tekchand Sawarkar had defeated Bhoyar by a margin of over 11,000 votes.

BJP Mumbai president Ashish Shelar is in the fray from Vandre (Bandra) West, facing Asif Zakaria of the Congress.

Raj Thackeray’s son and Aaditya’s cousin, Amit Thackeray, is in the race from the Mahim seat in Mumbai. He is pitted against Shiv Sena’s Sada Sarvankar and Shiv Sena (UBT)’s Mahesh Sawant.

Amit Deshmukh, the late CM Vilasrao Deshmukh’s son, is the Congress candidate from Latur City, facing a tough fight from the BJP’s Archana Patil Chakurkar, daughter-in-law of Shivraj Patil Chakurkar, a former Union Home Minister.

Amit’s younger brother and the sitting MLA Dhiraj is up against BJP’s Ramesh Karad in the adjoining Latur Rural constituency.

BJP leader Shaina NC is contesting on a Shinde Sena ticket from Mumbadevi against the sitting Congress MLA Amin Patel.

With inputs from agencies