At 33 years, Amit Deshmukh is probably the solitary star-son making a debut in electoral politics in this Maharashtra Assembly elections who can afford to be smug.

Needless to say, it will take nothing short of a miracle for him to be defeated from Latur, a seat his father Vilasrao Deshmukh won five times. But what sets Amit apart from other politicians’ relatives who are tipped to win is that he is being seen as a natural inheritor of the legacy: Not only was there no other claimant for his ticket with the senior Deshmukh now in New Delhi, but it’s also a coming of age for the former chief minister’s eldest son who has been politically active in Latur for a decade now and has recently travelled through the state as vice-president of the Maharashtra Pradesh Youth Congress.

“I’ve spearheaded perhaps 25 or more election campaigns for the Congress in Latur in 10 years, through the youth wing,” he says, counting off every level of local politics from district cooperative bodies like sugar mills and cooperative banks to the Latur municipality and the Zilla Parishad, all under the absolute control of the Congress. To his credit, and that of his father, it was the two Assembly segments of Latur City and Latur Rural that wrested the Latur parliamentary constituency back for the Congress earlier this year. Jaywant Awale, who won that election, could not post a lead in any of the remaining four Assembly segments, despite the fact that the Congress had won this parliamentary seat seven times in a row until 2004, when former Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil suffered a shock defeat.

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