Shiv Sena drops lawmaker who assaulted AI crew

Mumbai: The Shiv Sena on Friday declared a list of candidates for 21 of the 23 Lok Sabha constituencies it will be contesting in the state. Interestingly, the party has repeated 17 of its 18 sitting Members of Parliament (MP).

The Uddhav Thackeray-led party denied a ticket to its Osmanabad MP Ravindra Gaikwad, who had landed himself and the party in an embarrassing situation by assaulting an Air India (AI) cabin crewmember in March last year, as there were no business class seats on his flight. The party has dropped his name from the candidates’ list and replaced him with Omraje Nimbalkar. The Sena has also not announced its candidates for Palghar and Satara seats.  

At present, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Rajendra Gavit is representing Palghar. The Sena has staked its claim on the seat, even as the BJP has opposed this.

Senior Sena leader Subhash Desai said that the party would announce the names of the remaining candidates by Sunday.

According to the Sena’s list, Arvind Sawant will contest the Mumbai South seat,  Rahul Shewale has been fielded in Mumbai South Central while Gaja-nan Kirtikar will contest the Mumbai North West seat. Rajan Vichare has been given a ticket in Thane and Shrikant Shinde has been fielded in Kalyan.

The list further stated that Union minister Ana-nt Geete will be fielded in Raigad, Vinayak Raut in Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg, Sanjay Mandlik in Kolh-apur, Dhairyasheel Mane in Hatkanangle, Hemant Godse in Nashik, Sadas-hiv Lokhande in Shirdi, Shivajirao Adhalrao Patil in Shirur, Chandrakant Khaire in Aurangabad, Bhavana Gawli in Yava-tmal-Washim, Prataprao Jadhav in Buldhana, Kri-pal Tumane in Ramtek, Anandrao Adsul in Amravati, Sanjay Jadhav in Parbhani, Shrirang Barne in Maval and Hemant Patil in Hingoli.

Mr Gaikwad had brag-ged about having hit him with a slipper 25 times on national television. The Asian Age tried to contact to Mr Gaikwad, but its calls went unanswered.

However, the Sena had given different treatment to Mr Vichare, who had been accused of using criminal force to feed a chapati to a fasting Muslim canteen employee during Ramzan in Maharashtra Sadan in July 2014. The Sena had defended Mr Vichare, saying that he was not aware that the canteen employee was a Muslim.