Shiv Sena appoints Vinayak Raut as LS party leader

Mumbai: Shiv Sena Member of Parliament Vinayak Raut will be the leader of the Shiv Sena parliamentary party in the Lok Sabha. Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray has written to the Union Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Prahlad Joshi informing him about Raut’s appointment.

Shiv Sena’s group leader in the 16th Lok Sabha, former Union minister Anant Geete, was defeated this time. Mr Geete is a six-term MP from the state.

Other senior leaders like Anandrao Adsul, Chandrakant Khaire, Shivajirao Adhalrao-Patil also tasted defeated in the recently-concluded polls.

According to a party insider, their defeats forced the party to appoint Mr Raut, one of the few remaining senior MPs in Lok Sabha, as its Lok Sabha leader.

Shiv Sena has 18 MPs in the Lok Sabha and is the second largest party in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Mr Raut, a second-term MP elected from the Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg constituency, had defeated Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha’s Nilesh Rane by over 1.70 lakh votes.

A member of the Shiv Sena for nearly five decades, Mr Raut was first elected as a Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) corporator in 1985.

In the 1999 Assembly election, he contested from Vile Parle constituency and won. Later, he was elected to the Maharashtra Legislative Council in 2012 but resigned after winning the 2014 Lok Sabha election from Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg constituency.