Maharashtra Congress leader Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil resigns as MLA, likely to join BJP

Maharashtra Congress leader Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil resigned as MLA and submitted his resignation to Speaker of the Vidhan Sabha on Tuesday. Though there are no official confirmation, but there’s strong buzz that he is likely to join the BJP. In fact, a Times Now report said that 10 more lawmakers have supposedly rebelled and are likely to join the BJP along with Patil. Earlier, he had resigned as the Leader of Opposition in the Maharashtra Assembly. The development comes months after Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil’s son Sujay Vikhe Patil left joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Sujay Patil had quit the Congress after failing to convince the party leadership to field him from Ahmednagar constituency for the Lok Sabha elections as the seat belonged to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) as part of the Congress-NCP alliance. He won with a margin of 2.81 lakh votes from Ahmednagar Lok Sabha constituency. NCP had straight away refused to let Congress field Vikhe Patil from the seat. Immediately, Sujay joined the BJP and the saffron party fielded him from the Ahmednagar constituency against NCP candidate Sangram Jagtap.

Coming back to Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, he is the son of veteran politician and former Finance Minister Balasaheb Vikhe Patil. Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil was elected to the Shirdi constituency in 2009. He has been re-elected in 2014 assembly elections with landslide lead around 75000 votes. He was the Minister of Educational and Transportation in the Government of Ashok Chavan and re-elected for Agriculture and Marketing in the Government of Maharashtra in the Prithviraj Chavan-led Congress Government.

Importantly, the monsoon session of Maharashtra Legislature will commence in July and will be the last session before the state goes to polls later this year.