BJP, Cong agree in three places, wrestle in Nagpur

This picture has been used for representational purposes

After the Congress withdrew from Mumbai's legislative council fray, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) pulled back from Kolhapur and also convinced the Congress to opt out of Dhule on Friday. However, the Congress and BJP will fight it out in Nagpur, and the Sena will attempt to retain its seat in a combined constituency of three districts in western Vidarbha.

Of the six vacancies in which local self-government members vote, two in Mumbai and one each in Kolhapur and Dhule will have no polling on December 10. The Shiv Sena (Sunil Shinde) and the BJP (Rajhans Singh) will be elected unopposed, while in Kolhapur, the Congress (minister of state Satej Patil), and in Dhule, the BJP (Amarish Patel) are through for re-election to the upper house.

It seems the BJP and Sena didn't try rapprochement, and instead chose to play a battle between Gopikishan Bajoria (a sitting Sena MLC) and Vasant Khandelwal (BJP) in the Akola-Buldhana-Washim segment. Bajoria has been representing the segment for three terms since 2004. His son Viplav, also an MLC from Hingoli-Parbhani local self-government segment since 2018, is his colleague in the upper house.

The BJP and Congress have made the Nagpur constituency a matter of prestige. The Congress latched onto a prized catch, an RSS-BJP loyalist and sitting corporator Ravindra alias Chhotu Bhoyar for fielding as the party's candidate against the BJP's Chandrashekhar Bawankule, who was denied an Assembly ticket from his segment in 2019 despite being a sitting MLA and minister in the previous government.

The BJP wants to teach Bhoyar a lesson for his betrayal, while the Congress is confident of repeating a feat on the lines of a stunning victory over the BJP in the graduates' constituency last December. It was the BJP's first-ever defeat in this constituency in over five decades.