Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: Former Gangapur MLA Annasaheb Mane joined Shinde Sena with his son Santosh Mane at a Dussehra gathering in Mumbai on Thursday.
Annasaheb Mane, a two-term MLA, was first elected on a Shiv Sena ticket in 1999. In 2009, independent candidate Prashant Bamb defeated him. Mane's son Santosh Mane was elected as a Zilla Parishad member from the Sena in 2012.
During this time, Santosh was the head of the Yuva Sena and the president of the Khadi Village Industries Corporation. Annasaheb was unhappy with the party for giving Ambadas Danve the Assembly ticket at the last minute in the 2014 Assembly elections. Therefore, he joined the NCP to get a ticket for his son on October 2, 2019.
In the 2019 Assembly elections, Santosh Mane got 72,222 votes on the NCP ticket, which was the second highest.
After that, as Satish Chavan started preparing for the Gangapur constituency for the 2024 assembly elections, Appasaheb and his son joined the Telangana-based Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) on April 24, 2023. However, after the defeat of the BRS party in its home State, this party stopped its expansion in Maharashtra.
Both father and son were aloof from politics since then. However, now they have returned home in a way by joining the Sena once again. After former MLA Kailas Patil, Mane is the second former MLA of the Sena to join the Shinde Sena with his son.