AS BJP national general secretary Vinod Tawde found himself in a poll-eve controversy in Maharashtra Tuesday, after allegedly being caught with cash, on the other side stood a familiar name – the powerful Thakur family of Vasai-Virar.

Supporters of the family, which is no stranger to controversy itself, claimed to have caught Tawde distributing cash at a hotel in Virar East.

The Thakur family patriarch, Hitendra Thakur, a six-time MLA from Vasai, heads the Bahujan Vanchit Aghadi (BVA), which holds significant influence in the semi-urban regions of Virar, Vasai, and Nalasopara in Palghar district. The family’s vast business interests extend into nearly every local enterprise.

There are three BVA MLAs in the outgoing Maharashtra Assembly, including Hitendra’s son Kshitij Thakur, a three-time MLA from Nalasopara, and Rajesh Patil, a two-time MLA from Boisar.

Hitendra’s brother Bhai Thakur is also a known figure, being a convicted gangster with alleged links to Dawood Ibrahim.

After the 2019 elections, the BVA had extended its support to the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government. However, the two had a falling out, with the BVA accusing MVA leaders of arrogance and inaccessibility, particularly over the appointment of an administrator to the Vasai Virar Municipal Corporation.

Then, starting February 2021, the Thakur family found itself under Enforcement Directorate scrutiny in connection with a probe into the alleged Rs 6,200 crore fraud involving Housing Development Infrastructure Limited (HDIL) and the Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative (PMC) Bank.

Come June 2022, the family shifted its allegiance to the BJP during the Rajya Sabha elections, with the shake-up triggered by that eventually contributing to the collapse of the MVA government and its replacement with the BJP-Shiv Sena government soon after.

However, since then, the Thakur family’s relationship with the BJP too has soured. In this election, the BVA’s Kshitij Thakur is facing the Congress’s Vijay Patil and the BJP’s Sneha Dube Pandit in his Nalasopara seat.

Kshitij too has had his share of run-ins with the law. Having grown up mostly outside the state, and educated in the US, he had a very public altercation in 2013 with a police officer on the Bandra-Worli Sea Link. This confrontation escalated, resulting in a privilege motion against the police officer, followed by an assault on him by MLAs inside the Maharashtra Assembly.

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