Constituency Watch: After Pawar Scion Vanquished in 2019, It's Now 'Sena VS Sena' in Maval

In 2019, the Maval Lok Sabha seat in Maharashtra shot into the limelight more for the loser than the winner.

Parth Pawar, the son of current Deputy Chief Minister and NCP chief Ajit Pawar, was defeated by (undivided) Shiv Sena's heavyweight Shrirang C. Barne in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

Ostensibly bulldozing the then-undivided party, Ajit Pawar had secured a ticket for his son Parth. At that time the Shiv Sena and NCP were in opposite camps and the sitting MP Barne trounced Parth Pawar by a significant margin of 2.15 lakh-plus votes, embarrassing the powerful Pawar clan in the state.

However, after the vertical splits in the Shiv Sena (June 2022) and NCP (July 2023), the two erstwhile enemies are now together in the MahaYuti government which includes the BJP.

Under the changed political equations in 2024, the ruling Shiv Sena has nominated Barne for a hat-trick performance, while Shiv Sena-UBT led by former Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has fielded Sanjog B. Waghere-Patil as an MVA-INDIA bloc candidate, and the Prakash Ambedkar's Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi has nominated Madhavi N. Joshi here.

Despite a crowd of 33 candidates in the fray, Maval will be one of the few direct 'Sena-versus-Sena' confrontations in the state during the 2024 LS polls, but the NCP has quietly deployed the 2019 runner-up Parth Pawar to campaign for his mother Sunetra Pawar in Baramati and certain other seats it is contesting.

Both the MVA and ruling MahaYuti have made winning Maval a prestige issue with top bigwigs from either side campaigning furiously for their respective candidates.

The parliamentary constituency, which came into existence in February 2008 after the delimitation exercise, first elected Gajanan Babar of Shiv Sena (2009), followed by an ex-Congressman Barne who bagged it in 2014 (Shiv Sena) and 2019 (Shiv Sena), sailing through easily in the two ‘BJP waves’ -- (undivided) Shiv Sena was an NDA partner then.

Considered a fortress of the (undivided) Shiv Sena, Maval is made up of six assembly segments -- sprawled equally (three each) in Pune and Raigad districts -- of which two each are held by the NCP and BJP, one by the Shiv Sena and one by an independent.

The assembly segments held by NCP are Maval (MLA Sunil Shelke) and Pimpri (SC reserved) (MLA Anna D. Bansode); the BJP won Panvel (MLA Prashant Thakur) and Chinchwad (MLA Ashwini L. Jagtap, who was elected in a by-poll last year after the demise of her husband, sitting BJP MLA Laxman Jagtap); the Shiv Sena hold Karjat (MLA Mahendra Thorve); and Independent Mahesh Baldi from Uran.