Embattled MVA gets a jolt as farmer leader Raju Shetti exits ruling coalition

aju Shetti’s SSS was earlier an ally of the BJP-led NDA before he severed ties with the saffron party in 2017

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Mumbai: Under the relentless scrutiny of probes by central enforcement agencies, the ruling Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Congress led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government on Tuesday received yet another setback after Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana (SSS) chief Raju Shetti officially announced the exit of his outfit from the MVA coalition. 

Raju Shetti, has been an influential farmer leader in Maharashtra’s ‘sugar belt’ districts of Kolhapur and Sangli. Since October last year he had been unhappy with the MVA parties over the payment of the fair and remunerative price (FRP) to farmers. He had been criticizing the State government’s practice of paying FRP to farmers in two installments instead of a lump sum payment.

Announcing this at the SSS’ executive meet in Kolhapur, Shetti, however clarified that he would not be joining the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) ranks and that his outfit would henceforth fight on its own strength for the interests of Maharashtra’s farmers. 

Shetti said, “I declare that as of today, we have nothing more to do with the MVA and all our relations are at an end. We were cheated by those in power in Delhi (BJP) as well as those in Mumbai (Shiv Sena, NCP, Congress).”

A former two-time MP from Hatkanangale in Kolhapur district, Shetti was once a constituent of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). He had severed his ties with the BJP in 2017 and became a strident critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policies.

The farmer leader, who had backed the NCP and the Congress in the 2019 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, was defeated in the general election that year after losing the Hatkanangale seat to the Sena’s Dhairyasheel Mane (of then Sena-BJP alliance). 

Considered a player with considerable clout in the politics of the ‘sugar belt’ of Maharashtra, Shetti first came to political prominence in 2004 as an avowed nemesis of Pawar clan and the ‘sugar lobby’ headed by NCP and Congress politicians. He then  had said his political mission was to put all sugar barons behind bars. 

After winning the Shirol Assembly seat as an Independent in 2004, he trumped NCP’s MP Nivedita Mane in the 2009 general election, to win by a margin of more than 95,000 votes. In 2014, he allied his party with the BJP and was re-elected by an even greater margin of 1.77 lakh votes. 

Ever since he quit the BJP-led NDA in August 2017, he has been a staunch critic of the Narendra Modi and the Devendra Fadnavis governments at the Centre and in Maharashtra.  

His alliance with Pawar’s NCP and the Congress proved costly as he was trounced in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Since then, Shetti has been increasingly disillusioned with the MVA, accusing them of slighting him and the interests of the farmers. 

The bitterness increased after an attempt last year on the MVA’s part to get Shetti elected as an MLC (Member of Legislative Council) under the Governor’s quota flopped.

At the 20th annual ‘sugar conclave’ held in Jaysingpur in western Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district last year, Shetti had urged farmers to protest against the MVA leaders by showing black flags. 

While he has been spearheading agitations of milk and sugarcane farmers for better remunerative prices at regular intervals, Shetti has been projecting himself as the farmers’ mascot in the run-up to the polls.