A mix of political ambition, the urge to promote dynasties, delimitation of constituencies and new players in the fray has resulted in a major headache for all key players in next month’s Assembly elections in Maharashtra. Leaders across the political spectrum have rebelled and filed their nominations after being denied tickets and their parties fear that this could result in a fragmented mandate, forcing them to woo Independents and rebels to reach the magic figure of 145 in the Assembly of 288.

The most prominent revolt has taken place in the Congress, with Minister of State for Finance Sunil Deshmukh contesting against the party’s official nominee and son of President Pratibhatai Patil, Raosaheb Shekhawat in Amravati. In Industries Minister Narayan Rane’s constituency of Kudal, Congressman Pushpasen Sawant has rebelled and has decided to take on the might of Rane.

In Marathwada, the one-upmanship between Chief Minister Ashok Chavan and his predecessor Vilasrao Chavan appears to have resulted in an independent from Kandhar (Nanded) Prataprao Patil-Chikhlikar, who supports the Congress-NCP government and wanted to contest on the Congress symbol this time, rebelling against the official NCP nominee Shankar Dhondge. Chiklikar is a Deshmukh supporter who had fielded candidates in the Nanded Municipal Corporation elections in 2007 against Chavan’s men. But Chavan’s supporters had won 37 of the 73 seats and Congress circles are rife with speculation that the seat went to NCP because Chavan wanted to spite Deshmukh and Chiklikar so that the latter could not contest.

Congress MLA Ajit Ghorpade has challenged state NCP chief R R Patil in Tasgaon (Sangli) as the former’s Kavthe Mahankal constituency has been merged with Tasgaon. The prominent NCP rebels include Minister of State Ramraje Naik Nimbalkar from Phaltan (Satara), MLA Shalinitai Patil from Koregaon (Satara), MLA Rajeev Rajale from Pathardi (Ahmednagar) and Prashant Paricharak in Pandharpur (Solapur).

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