Will Santhosh Danve Able To Hold On To Family Pocket Borough Bhokardan? (image:facebook.com/santoshdanvepatil/)

BJP leader Santhosh Raosaheb Danve is a two-time MLA from Bhokardan Assembly constituency. In the forthcoming polls, the party renominated him from the same seat, confident to secure a third term.

Santhosh is the son of former Union minister Raosaheb Danve. Touted as the Maratha face of the party, under his father’s realm, the saffron party expanded its influence in the state’s rural regions, and in the following several local elections, the rural votes integrated with BJP votes in the urban centers and won the election in large numbers.

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Bhokardan constituency is considered to be the Danve family’s pocket borough, and Raosaheb Danve represented it twice before becoming a parliamentarian.

In the 2014 Assembly polls, Santhosh secured 69,597 votes from the assembly segment. In his debut contest, he wrested the seat from NCP’s Chandrakant Pundlikrao Danve by a margin of 6,750 votes. In the 2019 polls, Santhosh retained the seat by defeating Chandrakant Danve by 32,490 votes.

In the recent Lok Sabha elections, Congress candidate Kalyan Kale defeated Santhosh’s father in Jalna. Though Raosaheb Danve was a five-term BJP MP from the constituency, along with anti-incumbency, anger from the Maratha community made his contest a tough one. So after father’s loss in the Lok Sabha polls, Santhosh is currently in a prestigious battle to maintain his stronghold in Bhokardan.

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Meanwhile, Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar faction) are tapping on anti-incumbency sentiments among voters to defeat Santhosh.

The 288 assembly constituencies in Maharashtra goes to polls in a single phase on November 20. As election dates are coming closer, the Mahayuti alliance and Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) are engaged in intense poll preparations. The Maharashtra Assembly elections mark the first after the Shiv Sena and NCP parties split in June 2022 and July 2023, respectively.