Bigwigs from various political parties, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, her predecessor Rahul Gandhi, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and actor-turned politician Shatrugan Sinha will be among the prominent campaigners for their respective parties in the Maharashtra Assembly polls.
Given that the Assembly polls are scheduled for October 21, the electioneering in the State will be less than a fortnight-long affair.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray will lead the ruling BJP-Sena alliance campaign in the State.
Modi, Shah, Adityanath, working president JP Nadda, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Union Ministers like Nitin Gadkari, Piyush Goyal, Prakash Javadekar, Smruti Irani, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Purushottam K Rupala, Raosaheb Patil-Danve and G. Kisan Reddy will be among the other key campaigners for the BJP in the State Assembly polls.
Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, Karnataka’s deputy Chief Minister Laxman Savadi, his counterpart from Uttar Pradesh Keshavprasad Maurya, BJP’s Vice-President Vasundhararaje Scindia, key functionaries like V Satish, Saroj Pandey, Bhupendra Yadav will be other key campaigners.
Sonia Gandhi, former PM Manmohan Singh, former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra, Shatrughan Sinha, Mallikarjun Kharge and Ghulam Nabi Azad will be among the key campaigners for the Congress.
Current and former Chief Ministers like Kamal Nath, Ashok Gehlot, Sushilkumar Shinde, Ashok Chavan and Prithviraj Chavan, leaders like Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot and Mukul Wasnik will be Congress’ other campaigners.
The other notable listed campaigners include: State Congress chief Balasaheb Thorat, yesteryear actress Nagma, Vijay Wadettiwar and Nana Patole.
While Sharad Pawar will lead the NCP’s campaign, its leaders Praful Patel, Ajit Pawar, Supriya Sule, Chhagan Bhujbal, Jayant Patil and Dhananjay Munde and television actor Amol Kole will be other key campaigners.
Dr Kolhe, who had quit Shiv Sena early this year and joined NCP, is a popular face in Maharashtra after having portrayed the roles of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj in the television serials.
The NCP’s other notable campaigners will include Nawab Malik,Majeed Memon, Sunil Tatkare, Dilip Walse-Patil, Arun Gujrathi, Anil Deshmukh, Jitendra Awhad, Hasan Mushrif, Anna Dange, Fauzia Khan, Narendra Verma and television actor Amol Kolhe.From the Shiv Sena side, Uddhav and Aditya Thackeray will be the key campaigners. Senior leaders Ramdas Kadam, Subhash Desai, Diwakar Raote, Priyanka Chaturvedi and Sanjay Dina Patil will be other campaigners.
Raj Thackeray will be the star campaigner for the MNS The other campaigners will be Shalini Thackeray, Bala Nandgaonkar, Sandip Deshpande, Nitin Sardesai and Yeshwant Killedar.
Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi’s campaign will be led by its chief Prakash Ambedkar, while the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owasi and Syed Imtiaz Jaleel will campaign for their parties.