Mumbai: This is one situation late film star and Congress leader Sunil Dutt may not have imagined. His two children, Priya and Sanjay Dutt are campaigning for opposing parties in the Maharashtra assembly polls in the same constituency.
Congress MP Priya Dutt will campaign for party leader and former minister Baba Siddiqui, a confidant of the Dutt family for over three decades, while actor Sanjay Dutt would canvas for advocate Rizwan Merchant.
The siblings have pitted themselves in the Bandra West constituency where Baba Siddiqui is taking on Merchant. Sanjay Dutt is Samajwadi Party general secretary.
According to Samajwadi Party youth wing leader Farooq Ghosi, Sanjay Dutt and his wife Manyata accompanied Merchant when he filed his nomination papers and also signed as the proposers.
Sanjay Dutt said the Bandra West area was his father Sunil Dutt's stronghold and "I shall ensure that the Samajwadi Party candidate wins from here".
Earlier, Sanjay Dutt and his wife also accompanied state Samajwadi Party president Abu Asim Azmi, a former Rajya Sabha member, when he filed his papers from the Mankhurd-Shivajinagar assembly constituency, in north-east Mumbai.
A well-known Mumbai journalist Sarfaraz Aarzoo, editor of the Urdu daily Hindustan, meanwhile filed his nomination as a Samajwadi Party candidate from the Muslim-dominated Byculla assembly constituency in south Mumbai.
Sitting legislator of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) Bashir M Patel, who defected to the party last week, also filed his papers from Mumbadevi constituency in south Mumbai.
In northern Maharashtra, Samajwadi Party nominee Sharad Gavit filed his papers from Navapur constituency. He was the runner-up in the May 2009 Lok Sabha elections from Nandurbar parliamentary seat in which Navapur falls, losing out to Congress's Manikrao Gavit.
Farooq Ghosi said of the total 37 seats his party is contesting as a constituent of the Republican Left Democratic Front (RLDF), known as the third front, the party hopes to bag 15 to 20 seats.
Top Samajwadi Party leaders, including Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh, are expected to campaign for the party candidates in the state, he said.
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