Dhananjay Bodare: Eyeing Kalyan East Assembly Seat (image:facebook.com/bodaredhananjay)
Kalyan East, Maharashtra: Dhananjay Bodare has fielded from Kalyan East on the Shiv Sena (UBT) ticket. In the 2019 Assembly polls, he contested from the constituency and came runner-up.
Bodare serves as the district chief of the party. He served as the district coordinator of the party and was a Deputy Mayor at Ulhasnagar Municipal Corporation. Earlier, he Shiv Sena’s Opposition leader in Ulhasnagar
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As per the reports, Congress, Thackeray faction, and the NCP (Sharad Pawar) raised a claim over the Kalyan East, and finally, the seat went to the Thackeray group. Even within the Thackeray group, there is dissatisfaction over leaving the seat to Bodare since they wanted it to go to local candidates.
In the 2019 polls, incumbent BJP MLA Ganpat Gaikwad won the seat, securing 60,332 seats. He defeated Bodare by a margin of 12,257 votes. Gaikwad served the constituency for three consecutive terms: 2009, 2014, and 2019. Gaikwad is currently in jail for allegedly shooting at Kalyan Sena chief Mahesh Gaikwad at an Ulhasnagar police station in February this year.
The BJP’s nomination of Sulabha Gaikwad, wife of Gaikwad, for the Kalyan East has taken many by surprise. Chief Minister Eknath Shinde expressed dissatisfaction with the BJP for giving seat to Sulabha. Similarly, large number of Shinde Sena workers protested against the BJP’s decision to contest Sulabha, and they demanded the seat be given to Mahesh Gaikwad, Nilesh Shinde, or Vishal Pavshe.
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Kalyan East is located in Thane district. The 288 Assembly seats in Maharashtra will go to polls on November 20 and counting of votes will take place on November 23.
The ruling Mahayuti alliance consists of the BJP, the Chief Minister Eknath Shinde-led breakaway faction of the Shiv Sena, and the deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar’s faction of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). The opposition alliance comprise the INDIA bloc’s MVA or the Maha Vikas Aghadi, which has the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), or SS (UBT) led by former CM Uddhav Thackeray, the NCP (SP) faction led by Sharad Pawar and the Congress.
