As many as 20 of the 48 MPs from Maharashtra are making their debut in the 17th Lok Sabha.
Eleven of them are from the BJP, four from the Shiv Sena, two from the NCP, one is an independent backed by the NCP, and one each is from the Congress and AIMIM. From the BJP, Sujay Vikhe Patil (Ahmednagar) Sunil Mendhe (Bhandara Gondiya), Bharati Pawar (Dindori), Unmesh Patil (Jalgaon), Sudhakar Shrangare (Latur), Ranjit Nimbalkar (Madha), Manoj Kotak (Mumbai North East), Pratap Chiklikar (Nanded), Girish Bapat (Pune), Jaisiddeshwar Swami (Solapur) and Ranjit Nimbalkar (Madha) are entering the Lok Sabha for the first time. Sena’s first-time MPs are Dhairyasheel Mane (Hatkanagale), Omraje Nimbalkar (Osmanabad), Sanjay Mandlik (Kolhapur) and Hemant Patil (Hingoli).
Actor Amol Kolhe (Shirur) and Sunil Tatkare (Raigad) are first-time MPs from NCP. Other new faces are NCP-backed independent Navnit Rana (Amravati), AIMIM’s Imtiaz Jaleel Syed (Aurangabad), and Suresh Dhanorkar, the sole Congress MP in the state now.
Eight women, more than half of them from the BJP, have also made it to the 17th Lok Sabha from Maharashtra. The women candidates who emerged victorious in the 2019 elections are Supriya Sule (NCP-Baramati), Bhavna Gawli (Shiv Sena-Yavatmal-Washim), Pritam Munde (Beed), Raksha Khadse (Raver), Heena Gavit (Nandurbar), Poonam Mahajan (Mumbai North Central), Bharati Pawar (Dindori) – all from the BJP – and Navnit Rana (NCP-backed independent-Amravati). Of the 867 candidates in the fray in Maharashtra, 80 were women.
