Mumbai, March 29 (IANS): Belying expectations, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday named former Congressman Ranjeetsinh Naik-Nimbalkar as its candidate for the Madha Lok Sabha constituency.

He will lock horns with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)'s Sanjay Shinde, changing the political equations in the crucial seat in Western Maharashtra.

The development also scuttles the chances of mega-hopeful Ranjitsinh Mohite-Patil, who had defected to the BJP earlier this month from the NCP after the party declined to give him a ticket.

With the NCP suddenly nominating Shinde - a bitter rival of the Mohite-Patil family - the BJP decided to nominate Naik-Nimbalkar as an effective counter.

Party sources claim that with Shinde's entry into the poll battlefield, Ranjitsinh Mohite-Patil would be accommodated in the Maharashtra Legislative Council later.

The Madha seat shot into limelight last month after NCP President Sharad Pawar prepared to return to the poll fray, but at the last minute opted out in favour of the gen-next, his grand-nephew Parth Ajit Pawar.

Suspense continued in the NCP over nominating former Deputy Chief Minister Vijaysinh Mohite-Patil though his son Ranjitsinh was denied the ticket, prompting him to join the BJP.

Later, in a development attributed to intense in-fighting in the NCP even Vijaysinh was not given a ticket and the party nominated Shinde.