Face-Off Between Kailash Gorantyal, Arjun Khotkar In Jalna
In Jalna constituency in central Maharashtra, Congress candidate and sitting MLA Kailash Gorantyal is pitted against Shiv Sena (Shinde) nominee Arjun Khotkar in the assembly polls. This election marks the third face-off between two rivals.
In the 2019 assembly polls, Gorantyal won the seat, defeating Khotkar by a margin of 25,338 votes. In the previous 2014 polls, Khotkar won the seat with 45,078 votes, while Gorantyal secured 44,782 votes.
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Gorantyal represented the constituency before—in 1999 and 2009. Similar to Congress leader, Khotkar has also represented Jalna multiple times. He won the seat in 1990, 1995, and 2004. He served as Cabinet Minister in the Shiv Sena government in 1999 and handled ministerial portfolios such as Textile, Animal Husbandry, Dairy Development, and Fisheries in 2016. Gorantyal had also served as guardian minister for Nanded and Osmanabad districts.
Since Jalna is at the centre of ongoing Maratha protests led by activist Manoj Jarange, how electorates will vote in the polls is being looked. There are reports that the BJP wants to contest from Jalna, but seats went to the alliance partner Shinde Sena, and the BJP leaders are dissatisfied with this seat-sharing arrangement.
Jalna assembly segment is located in the Jalna district and is a part of Jalna Lok Sabha constituency.
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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.
The Assembly elections mark first one in the state after Shiv Sena and NCP split in 2022, and 2023 respectively.
