Kolhapur North Assembly seat by-poll to witness a straight fight between to Patil’s

By-poll will be another litmus test for MVA alliance; prestige of BJP’s Chandrakant Patil and the Congress’ Satej Patil also at stake

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Mumbai: Even though the by-poll for the Kolhapur North Assembly seat is still nearly three weeks away, the electoral contest has already heated up with the prestige of two Patil’s at stake for the by-election to be held on April 12. The two Patil’s being Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) State president Chandrakant Patil and senior Congress leader Satej ‘Bunty’ Patil – the Minister of State for Home in the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government.

Both state BJP president Chandrakant Patil and senior Congress leader and Minister of State for Home, Satej ‘Bunty’ Patil are gearing up for a high-stakes contest. There is much behind the scenes political drama that is unfolding with much intrigue and rifts within the ruling MVA coalition of the Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress.

On Wednesday, Chandrakant Patil, who was present when the BJP candidate Satyajit Kadam filed his nomination papers, jokingly offered to withdrawal of his party’s candidate and make the Congress’ candidate Jayashree Jadhav an MLA if she joined the BJP.

There was good reason for his joke, for Jayashree Jadhav has been a former BJP corporator in the Kolhapur Municipal Corporation (KMC).

The by-poll has been necessitated following the demise of in December last year of sitting Congress MLA Chandrakant Jadhav, who was Jayashree Jadhav’s husband.

Late Chandrakant Jadhav had wrested the seat from the Shiv Sena by defeating its candidate Rajan Kshirsagar in the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly election when the Sena and the BJP were still allies, albeit fragile ones.

Rajan Kshirsagar had won the seat twice for the Sena – in 2009 and in the 2014 Assembly elections. The Kolhapur North constituency was considered a Sena bastion at a time when the party had few pockets of influence outside Mumbai city, Thane and parts of the Konkan region in Maharashtra.

But now that the Congress and the Shiv Sena are ruling allies in the state, the latter, after much wrangling, was forced to concede the seat to the Congress.

This conceding of the seat to the Congress speaks of the Sena’s diminishing influence in Kolhapur and a comeback of sorts for the Congress in the district – a key area in Maharashtra’s ‘sugar heartland.’

The main reason for this is Satej Patil, the son of noted educationist and politico D.Y. Patil and the current Guardian Minister of Kolhapur. He had ensured the victory of his nephew Ruturaj Patil in the 2019 Assembly election from the Kolhapur South Assembly seat.

With the Congress perennially plagued by a sclerotic senior leadership, Satej Patil had proved a local exception to the rule by conducting an effective campaign which not only took maximum advantage of the fractiousness between the Sena and the BJP but also successfully promoted the Congress as an alternative to the then BJP-Sena government’s ‘failures’ in the region.

Crucially, Satej Patil’s tacit concert with Shiv Sena MP from Kolhapur Sanjay Mandalik, who had emphatically voiced his support for the young Ruturaj, had yielded rich dividends for the Congress in general in Kolhapur.

At the time, Satej Patil and Sanjay Mandalik were driven by a common desire to defeat Amal Mahadik (former BJP MLA from Kolhapur South seat) and dealt a blow to Dhananjay Mahadik and the Mahadik clan. Dhananjay Mahadik, then with the NCP, later joined the BJP.

In 2019 assembly polls, Satej Patil had benefitted from his clandestine alliance with the Sena’s Sanjay Mandlik, he faces opposition from the Sena’s Rajan Kshirsagar for the Kolhapur North by-poll. Unhappy over the seat being handed over to the Congress, Rajan Kshirsagar has threatened to raise the banner of revolt and thus undercut the MVA’s chances against the BJP.

The BJP’s Chandrakant Patil, too, is leaving no stone unturned to exploit the schism within the MVA alliance.

So far, the MVA and the BJP have scored one win each in the two by-elections have been held since the MVA alliance came to power in Maharashtra in November 2019.

In May 2021, the BJP’s Samadhan Autade wrested the Pandharpur-Mangalwedha seat where a poll was held after the death of NCP MLA Bharat Bhalke, while in November, Jitesh Antapurkar of the Congress convincingly won the Deglur-Biloli seat that had been won by his late father, senior Congressman Raosaheb Antapurkar.