Pune:
Reassuring the farmers that the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government would stand by them through thick and thin, Maharashtra Chief Minister and Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray on Wednesday, reiterated his government’s commitment to total farm loan waiver, stating that it was actively planning a complete farm loan waiver in the coming days. Thackeray said this while speaking at the 43rd Annual General Meeting of the Vasantdada Sugar Institute (VSI), headed by Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar.
The Chief Minister clarified, “we have already announced an immediate waiver of crop loans up to Rs. 2 lakhs per farmer as immediate relief to cultivators. While we are certainly going to do this, we are also taking steps to ensure that their entire crop loan (above Rs. 2 lakhs) is waived,”
Thackeray further stated “the cooperative sector and politics of Maharashtra are inseparable. This sector has bequeathed several tall leaders to the State. The rural economy is dependent on this sector. As a result, it is incumbent upon us to ensure the well-being of the farmer, who is the fulcrum of this sector”..
Taking potshots at his estranged ally, the BJP, Thackeray said that in the earlier government, the Sena was figuratively only “half a component”. “What I mean by this is that we did not have the complete freedom to take decisions and follow them up. But that has changed now. (NCP chief) Sharad Pawar has taught us not only to raise farm productivity but also to form a government despite having lesser number of MLAs,” remarked Thackeray. He added that the BJP ought not to boast of having emerged as the single-largest party after the Assembly polls.
Praising the NCP chief for his vision behind setting up the VSI, Thackeray announced his government’s intention of establishing another branch of the Institute in the Marathwada region. “I am proud that such a concern (VSI) which delves into the technical problems of agriculture and disseminates its researches is in my State…so, their work, which has contributed so much to well-being of farmers while enhancing knowledge about best agricultural practices, must expand across the State. I promise that another branch of the VSI will be set up in Marathwada,” Thackeray said.
Noting the dire strait of the economy, he said that even the former Chief Economic Adviser (CEA) Arvind Subramanian had spoken of the Indian economy heading towards an “intensive care unit.” Thackeray stated “at a time when we are living in such economic doldrums, we have to ensure security for farmers’ livelihoods. While a number of problems ail the cooperative sector today, we will set a committee comprising of technical experts and agricultural scientists to come with suggestions and most importantly, act upon them to resolve problems in this sector,” Thackeray said.
Referring to the ideologically opposed coalition of the Sena and the Congress-NCP, the Chief Minister allayed the critics that the alliance is working in perfect harmony. Thackeray that he concurred with the knowledge and experience of Pawar and other leaders in the government on issues pertaining to agriculture and revenue. “We have a wealth of experience on these issues, be it Pawar’s knowledge or the experience of Ajit Pawar, Jayant Patil and Balasaheb Thorat,” Thackeray said.
While Maharashtra’s cooperative sector has been overwhelmingly dominated by leaders from the NCP and the Congress, the BJP has only managed to secure a marginal toehold in recent times, mainly by acquiring NCP and Congress leaders who defected to the party.
In contrast, the Shiv Sena has largely remained an ingénue in this sector with minimal presence in Maharashtra’s sugar cooperatives. A sense of this awareness was reflected in Thackeray’s speech, in which the Sena chief continually deferred to the expertise of Pawar. Earlier, eyebrows were raised when senior NCP Ajit Pawar changed his seating arrangement to be close to his bete noire ex-Congressman turned BJP leader Harshavardhan Patil, who had quit the Congress ahead of the Assembly polls.
A bitter Patil, a former Minister in the Congress-NCP government, had exited the Congress ahead of the Assembly polls while openly blaming the Pawar clan for their ‘duplicity’ in not leaving the Indapur Assembly seat for him. Just before the Lok Sabha polls in May this year, Ajit Pawar had personally conferred with Patil to ensure that he campaigned for his cousin, Supriya Sule’s win in the Baramati Lok Sabha constituency. (of which Indapur is a part)
Patil had backed Sule in the hope that the NCP would support his candidature in the Assembly polls for the Indapur Assembly segment. However, the candidature soon proved controversial as the NCP showed disinclination to cut the ticket of their sitting MLA (Bharne), which upset Patil who went over to the BJP. However, Ajit Pawar was seen amicably chatting with Patil prior to the VSI meet.
“There was no political talk…we discussed issues pertaining to agriculture,” Patil said after the event. Similarly, former NCP stalwart Vijaysinh Mohite-Patil, whose relations with the Pawar clan soured after a bitter tiff with them over ticket allocation during the Lok Sabha polls was seen holding a friendly conversation with Sharad Pawar ahead of the event.
“I have not gone anywhere…I am still with the NCP and Sharad Pawar. I had even met him a number of times after the Lok Sabha polls,” quipped Mohite-Patil when asked whether he had indeed gone over to the BJP.
Mohite-Patil’s son Ranjitsinh Mohite-Patil joined the BJP after the NCP brass allegedly refused the Mohite-Patils’ a ticket for the Madha Lok Sabha seat in Solapur. The elder Mohite-Patil had subsequently gone out to ensure the BJP’s victory in Madha and had shared the dais with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the latter’s rally in Solapur at the time of the Parliamentary election.
