With the Lok Sabha elections approaching, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in the key poll battleground of Maharashtra this month, his third visit to the state this year. Modi will be in the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) bastion of Satara that the BJP has never won. The seat is currently held by Shriniwas Patil who is in the Sharad Pawar faction of the NCP.

Modi will visit on February 19 on the birth anniversary of Chhatrapati Shivaji to receive the Shiv Samman Puraskar, which is awarded each year by the family that traces its lineage to the Maratha king. Rajya Sabha MP Udayan Raje Bhosale who is the 13th direct descendant of Chhatrapati Shivaji is expected to share the stage with the PM at the event.

A senior BJP functionary told The Indian Express that the PM’s visit was planned to “generate political impact” and give the BJP candidate a headstart for the polls. There is also strong buzz that the BJP is keen on fielding Bhosale from Satara. A senior BJP leader said the party believes “Bhosale will be the best candidate to take on the Opposition”.

A BJP leader involved in poll preparations said that the party has a choice of two or more candidates in select constituencies and while Bhosale is the “unanimous first choice for now” they may push for another candidate if the NCP fields current Baramati MP Supriya Sule, Pawar’s daughter, from Satara. The NCP has not so far signalled anything to that effect.

Bhosale was earlier with the NCP and worked closely with the Pawar family. He is a three-time Satara MP, winning the constituency three straight times from 2009 onwards. Ahead of the Maharashtra Assembly elections in 2019, he vacated the seat after joining the BJP. He lost the October 2019 bypoll to Patil. An image of Pawar addressing a rally amid pouring rain during the bypoll campaign became a talking point at the time and signalled the importance the NCP attaches to the seat. Bhosale became a Rajya Sabha MP the following year.

Modi visited Maharashtra twice in January. First, on January 13 he unveiled Atal Setu, the country’s longest bridge and inaugurated and laid the foundation of projects worth almost Rs 15,000 crore. A week later, he was in Solapur to inaugurate what has been billed as the largest low-cost housing project in the country and also laid the foundation of eight AMRUT (Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation) projects worth around Rs 2,000 crore.

The PM’s frequent visits to the state since the Eknath Shinde-led government came to power in June 2022 — Solapur was his eight visit — illustrate the BJP’s attempts to leverage his popularity and his government’s development message as it attempts to win at least 45 seats from Maharashtra. The state sends the most parliamentarians to the Lok Sabha (48) after Uttar Pradesh (80).

The BJP seemingly has the upper hand in Maharashtra at the moment since it has successfully split the Shiv Sena and NCP. But party leaders told The Indian Express last week there was still “hunger” for more. “There could be many surprises from the state ahead of the Lok Sabha polls,” a BJP leader involved in the state unit’s affairs said at the time.

Satara was a Congress stronghold from 1951 to 1991, the only exception being in 1957 when Nana Ramchandra Patil of the CPI bagged it. The state’s first CM Yashwantrao Chavan, who went on to become a Union Minister, won from Satara from 1967 to 1980. In 1996, the Shiv Sena’s Hindurao Nimbalkar won the seat but the Congress with its candidate, Abhaysingh Bhosale, clinched it back two years later. The Congress retained it till 2009.

There are six Assembly segments in the constituency, with the BJP holding one of them at present. The six Assembly segments are Wai (Makarand Jadhav Patil, NCP); Koregaon (Mahesh Shinde, Shiv Sena); Karad North (Syamrao Patil, NCP); Karad South (Prithviraj Chavan, Congress); Patan (Sambhuraj Desai, Shiv Sena); and Satara (Shivendra Raje Patil, BJP).