Ganesh Naik's son, 3 others hand in resignations

(Clockwise from bottom left) Sandeep Naik, Kalidas Kolambkar, Vaibhav Pichad and Shivendraraje Bhosale submit their resignations to state legislative assembly speaker Haribhau Bagade. Pics/Dharmendra Jore

As expected, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has lost more leaders to the BJP. On Tuesday, MLA Sandeep Naik, son of influential NCP leader Ganesh Naik, and three other opposition MLAs, resigned from the Assembly, ahead of joining the BJP. Sandeep's father, brother Sanjeev and over 55 corporators of the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) would follow the Airoli MLA very soon, said sources.

Along with Sandeep from Airoli, two other NCP legislators, Shivendraraje Bhosale from Satara, Vaibhav Pichad from Akole and Congress's Kalidas Kolambkar from Wadala have also quit. All of them will join BJP on Wednesday at a special event. Vaibhav's father Madhukar, who served as an NCP minister, is also expected to join BJP. All NCP office-bearers in Vaibhav's constituency have already resigned to enrol themselves as BJP members when their leader joins the party. Similarly, NCP workers and local office-bearers in Satara have also quit the party.

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Sandeep's departure is a significant move because with him, the power that is associated with his father, would shift to BJP, which is weak in Thane district. The ruling party doesn't have a leader of Naik's stature in the all-important districts of Thane and Palghar. Lamenting the party's ignorance of Sandeep's shenanigans in the past four years, senior NCP leader from Thane, Jitendra Awhad said the former minister had been systematically decaying NCP. "I have been telling the party leaders about this but they did not trust me," he said.

He blamed Ganesh for NCP's loss in local self-governments in Kalyan-Dombivli, Bhiwandi and Mira-Bhayander. "I told the party leaders that he would finish the party in five years [after the 2014 loss in the Assembly elections]. He supported the exodus from NCP over these years," said Awhad.

Also read: Another senior PDP leader resigns from party

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