Cong candidate’s nomination for Solapur MLC declared invalid after friend claims signature on nomination paper was forged

Kolhapur: The nomination of Congress candidate Aditya Fettepurkar, for the Solapur MLC election, was rejected on Tuesday after a proposer approached authorities claiming his signature on the nomination papers was forged.Returning officer and district collector S Karthikeyan declared the nomination invalid after verifying that the signatures did not match. “The proposer (Nagesh Bhosale, a councillor from Pandharpur and an eligible voter for the MLC election) came in with a certified affidavit claiming that the signature on the nomination papers of one of the candidates is not his. We found that the signatures didn’t match,” said a senior official associated with the process.With the Congress candidate out of the fray, seven candidates remain in contention for the Solapur seat, including BJP’s Rajendra Raut, NCP (SP) candidate Vasantrao Deshmukh and five independents. The seat was initially allocated to Congress under the MVA arrangement, but NCP (SP) fielded its own candidate.The development triggered a political storm at the collector’s office, with politicians from both BJP and Congress meeting the returning officer.Congress MP Praniti Shinde alleged foul play. “One of the proposers was kidnapped, threatened and bribed to back out as proposer. We know to what level BJP can stoop,” she said. BJP MLA Sachin Kalyanshetti denied the allegation, maintaining that Congress stood no chance electorally.Interestingly, Fettepurkar and Bhosale have shared a long association in public life spanning over three decades. They started their journeys as Pandharpur councillors together and also had business ties. Fettepurkar released an unverified audio clip purportedly featuring a conversation in which the person on the other end, claimed to be Bhosale, spoke of being under pressure.