Nagpur/Yavatmal: If Yavatmal-Washim Lok Sabha MP Sanjay Deshmukh defects from Shiv Sena (UBT) to deputy CM Eknath Shinde camp, it would be his fifth party switch within three decades, not counting his stint as an Independent in the state assembly. From the united Shiv Sena to Congress, to BJP, to UBT and now the expected jump to the Sena Shinde camp, Deshmukh has been a political survivor who kept rowing his political boat, despite headwinds. And even when no party gave him a ticket, Deshmukh managed to win the state assembly poll twice as an independent.The lone Vidarbha MP is among the six UBT Lok Sabha members reported to be part of ‘Operation Tiger’, has been ‘not reachable’ since Monday and is now in Delhi, where he’s expected to meet Deputy CM Eknath Shinde and BJP top brass.The 58-year-old Deshmukh is a first-generation politician who started at the grassroots and made Digras, a taluka in Yavatmal, his political stomping ground. A commerce graduate, he joined Shiv Sena in the mid-1990s and rose to become the party’s Yavatmal district chief alongside Sanjay Rathod, now a Shinde Sena minister and his long-standing political rival.Denied an assembly ticket in 1999, Deshmukh rebelled and contested from Digras as an independent, winning by a margin of just 126 votes. He went on to serve as MoS for youth and sports from 2001 to 2004 in the Congress-led alliance. In 2004, he retained Digras as an independent with a margin of over 2,500 votes.In 2009, Deshmukh switched to Congress and contested on its ticket, but lost the Digras seat after delimitation redrew the constituency a year earlier. He then changed track again in 2014, joining BJP in the presence of newly elected CM Devendra Fadnavis. But when he was denied a ticket for the 2019 assembly polls, Deshmukh once again went independent from Digras, and lost.When Shiv Sena split in 2022, Deshmukh joined the Uddhav Thackeray faction and became the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) candidate for the 2024 Lok Sabha poll from Yavatmal-Washim. He won with a margin of almost 1 lakh votes over the Shinde Sena candidate.
