Pimpri: With Assembly elections approaching, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition has fielded Rahul Kalate as the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) candidate from the Chinchwad constituency.
This will mark Kalate's fourth attempt at winning an Assembly seat. The announcement was made Sunday (October 27) by the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) faction after the Chinchwad seat was allocated to it in the alliance's seat-sharing agreement.
Kalate, who previously represented the Shiv Sena, began his political career by winning a corporator position in Pimpri-Chinchwad’s Wakad ward, where he later served as the Shiv Sena's group leader in the municipal corporation.
Following the Shiv Sena split, Kalate chose not to publicly align with either faction, though he remained associated with the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and thereby retained his MVA ties. His candidacy announcement for the NCP (SP) brings clarity to the MVA’s plans for Chinchwad.
Kalate hails from a political family; his father, Lieutenant Tanaji Kalate, was Wakad's first corporator, and his mother, Kamal Kalate, also held a corporator position.
Following this legacy, Kalate emerged victorious in the 2017 municipal elections. His political journey includes a notable performance in the 2014 Assembly elections, where he ran as a Shiv Sena candidate and secured the second-highest votes.
He again achieved a strong second-place finish in the 2019 Assembly elections as an independent candidate, gathering over 100,000 votes. In 2023, he ran as an independent in the Chinchwad by-election but came third.
Kalate's fourth candidacy has garnered significant interest among local voters, and only the results on November 23 will tell if he finally clinches victory.
