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Updated: Oct 01, 2019 23:03 IST

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday released its first list of 125 candidates for the upcoming Maharashtra assembly polls. The list is helmed by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, who will contest his Nagpur South West constituency, and state BJP chief Chandrakant Patil, who will fight his first assembly election from Pune’s Kothrud constituency.

Patil’s candidature indicates that the party is projecting him as its Maratha face and a mass leader only behind Fadnavis in the Maharashtra hierarchy. A member of the legislative council so far, he has been handed the seat, considered a safe one for the BJP,, instead of sitting MLA Medha Kulkarni.

At least four senior leaders of the party, including two sitting ministers, Vinod Tawde and Chandrashekhar Bawankule, did not figure in the first list. Two former ministers -- Eknath Khadse and Prakash Mehta =- have also not made the cut in the first list.

Both Khadse and Mehta faced allegations of graft. While Khadse was asked to resign in 2016, Mehta was dropped quietly in a recent cabinet reshuffle by Fadnavis.

Khadse, a BJP old timer and former Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly, however, went ahead and filed his nomination without the party’s AB form (intimation to election authorities about a party nominee’s candidacy. It was not yet clear whether this amounts to a rebellion or his name is likely to be included in the second list.

Power minister Bawankule and higher education minister Tawde were considered to be from Union minister Nitin Gadkari’s camp. BJP leaders said that their names could be included in the second list.

Another minister, Vishnu Sawra, has also not been nominated, but his son has been fielded from his Vikramgad constituency.

“The candidate list has a clear imprint of chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. The first list has his personal assistant Abhimanyu Pawar’s name but does not have names of two sitting and two former ministers, whom Fadnavis does not approve of. Patil’s nomination by the party top brass is also significant as it shows BJP is projecting him as its number two leader in the state,” said a senior BJP leader, who did not want to be named.

The party has dropped 12 of its sitting legislators in the first list and chosen 12 women candidates.

A majority of the turncoats who joined the BJP ahead of the polls from the Opposition have been fielded. However, senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ganesh Naik, who was inducted recently and was widely expected to be nominated from the Belapur constituency in Navi Mumbai, has missed out. The party has chosen to field its sitting MLA and Naik’s rival Manda Mhatre to the seat.

His son and former NCP MLA Sandeep Naik has been nominated from the adjoining Airoli seat. Other former NCP MLAs who have got BJP nominations include Shivendra Bhosale, Vaibhav Pichad and Ranajagjit Sinh Patil. Former Congress senior leaders who have won the party’s nomination include Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil (current state housing minister), former minister Harshawardhan Patil, legislators Jaykumar Gore and Kalidas Kolambkar.

While most defectors have been fielded from their constituencies, Ranajagjit Sinh Patil will contest the Tuljapur constituency because his Osmanabad seat is with the Shiv Sena, the BJP’s ally.

Fadnavis’s personal assistant Abhimanyu Pawar has been fielded from the Ausa constituency in Latur district of Marathwada. This seat was with the Sena.

The assembly speaker Haribhau Bagade, 75, has been nominated despite his age while the party has dropped its sitting MLA from Mulund, Sardar Tara Singh, and has nominated city unit vice president Mihir Kotecha instead. Tara Singh had sought the nomination for his son, Rajneet Singh, who is a director on the troubled Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative Bank.