Lok Sabha polls: Getting back migrant voters is key for Satara suitors
Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) candidate Shashikant Shinde | Photo: Wikipedia
One challenge for the leaders in the Satara parliamentary constituency is to convince thousands of residents, who work in Mumbai and other major cities of Maharashtra, to return home and vote on election day.
Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) candidate Shashikant Shinde said this Business standard that while the campaign has been intense over the past month, the last four days leading up to Election Day have been spent urging people to ask their respective relatives to return home for Election Day.
The issues that often come up in discussions with local residents in this predominantly rural agricultural district are water scarcity, remunerative prices for agricultural products and the promise of doubling agricultural incomes. There are also concerns about the Agniveer plan as the district has a long history of sending youth to the armed forces.
Shinde says his priority upon election will be to work on setting up an industrial estate and an IT park and boosting tourism. Shinde faces the challenge of retaining the seat of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which she has won for 25 years. Shinde is a member of the Legislative Council and is facing an investigation into allegations of corruption in the Navi Mumbai Agriculture Produce Market Committee.
His main opponent is Udyanraje Bhonsle of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a descendant of 17th century ruler Chhatarapati Shivaji, who won the seat as an NCP candidate in 2009, 2014 and 2019. In 2019, he left the NCP to join the BJP. In the subsequent poll held in October 2019, NCP’s Shriniwas Patil defeated Bhonsle by over 87,000 votes. The BJP later sent Bhonsle to the Rajya Sabha in 2020.
First print: May 6, 2024 | 11:48 PM IST