BJP’s Ram Shinde faces a stiff contest from Sharad Pawar’s grand-nephew Rohit Pawar in Karjat-Jamkhed

Pune: The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has turned the battle for the Karjat-Jamkhed assembly seat in Ahmednagar district, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stronghold since 1995, into a fierce prestige battle between BJP Minister Ram Shinde and Sharad Pawar’s grand-nephew, Rohit Pawar, the NCP-Congress’ candidate.

According to political observers, the seat is billed as one of the most fiercely contested in the entire Assembly election and is expected to throw up an unpredictable result.

Rohit Pawar, who along with his cousin Parth Pawar, the third generation of the Pawar family, has been meticulously preparing his ground for the Assembly polls since the past couple of years.

According to political experts Rohit Pawar has made his presence strongly felt during the drought this summer and the water scarcity that affected Karjat-Jamkhed. He has brought with him his youth, urbane mannerism and grassroots experience of working in Zilla Parishad political set up. After filing his nomination on Thursday, Pawar junior instead of criticizing his opponent or the ruling party, his focused on development in Karjat-Jamkhed, especially in irrigation, education, employment and better road connectivity.

Shinde, who filed his nomination on Friday, spoke about the development that he and his party had helped bring about in Karjat-Jamkhed. He pointed out to the development works done in his capacity as the State’s Water Conservation Minister and the Guardian Minister of Ahmednagar. He has the advantage of the BJP machinery and the support of Congress turncoat, Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, a sworn rival of the Pawar clan. Vikhe-Patil, a bitter adversary of Sharad Pawar, is bound to use his considerable pull in the district to prevent any encroachment on his turf by a member of the Pawar family.

Ideally, Vikhe-Patil would have considered Ram Shinde as his adversary in his desire to be Ahmednagar district Guardian Minister. However, Vikhe-Patil and his son Sujay Vikhe-Patil (BJP Lok Sabha MP from Ahmednagar) now face a more serious threat of Rohit Pawar making inroads in their Ahmednagar bastion, argued another political analyst. He added that Vikhe-Patil senior would do his best to support Shinde in order to prevent Pawar from winning the Karjat Jamkhed seat.

Despite talks of development by both candidates, the division between the Dhangar and Maratha communities will be the deciding factor in this contest. According to some political observers, Shinde’s rigid style of conducting himself has not gone down well with the people here. Yet, there are a number of extraneous factors that favour Shinde and the BJP in this perennial water scarcity region. Karjat-Jamkhed has been a bastion of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) for several decades. Water has always been a major issue here. It was the Sena-BJP government of 1995 that first brought water via the Kukadi Canal Irrigation project, whose command area covers Karjat and Shrigonda among other tehsils. It is likely to be the deciding factor in favour of the ruling party in a close contest here.