NCP, Congress on the defensive in ‘sugar heartland’ as BJP seeks to maximize gains

Pune: The Congress, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) face an uphill task of retaining their bastion in the Sugar belt of Maharashtra that is under siege laid by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Shiv Sena ‘Mahayuti’. This siege laid to the 70 odd assembly constituencies has only intensified following the massive mandate secured by the BJP-Sena alliance that has led to mass defections of several stalwart leaders from the Congress-NCP alliance.

Notwithstanding the indications of supposedly ‘one-sided contests’, it remains to be seen whether the BJP’s high pitched campaign spearheaded by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, which harped on the Centre’s withdrawal of Article 370, can decisively win the day for the ruling party in the sugar belt.

While Modi and Shah targeted Pawar and questioned the Opposition’s ‘patriotism, the 78-year-old NCP chief countered by arguing that the BJP shied away from speaking on critical issues like the economic slowdown and soaring unemployment. In order to boost NCP’s image of a floundering party on its last legs, Pawar carried out a spirited poll campaign which culminated in him defiantly addressing an election event in Satara, amidst heavy downpour.

Pawar senior’s never-say-die attitude may have secured him the admiration, it remains to be seen how much of the mileage translates into hard votes for the NCP. In order to replace the NCP and the Congress in the sugar belt and increase the BJP’s clout, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ canny strategy prior to the Lok Sabha elections had been to bail out former NCP, Congress leaders whose cooperative sugar factories were in financial crisis.

This strategy, along with exploiting the internal quarrels within the Congress, NCP camps, yielded handsome results for the BJP. In Ahmednagar district, the saffron party had a windfall before the Lok Sabha polls after first Sujay Vikhe-Patil, and later his father, senior Congressman Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, joined the BJP.

The senior Vikhe-Patil, who is contesting from the Shirdi Assembly segment this time has thrown his weight to ensure that all 12 seats in the district are won by the BJP.

But the fight to watch out for is in Ahmednagar district is between young Rohit Pawar, the grand-nephew of the NCP chief and BJP Minister and sitting MLA Ram Shinde in the high profile Karjat-Jamkhed Assembly constituency.

In the Congress bastion of Solapur, sitting MLA from Praniti Shinde, the daughter of former Chief Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, faces formidable opposition from candidates of the Prakash Ambedkar-led Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) in the Solapur City Central Assembly seat. Once the Shinde family’s stronghold, their hold over the segment has been seriously eroded with the Dalit and Muslim voters shifting towards the VBA and the AIMIM in recent times.

Another prestige battle is the Satara Lok Sabha by-election, which takes place the same time as the Assembly polls. Here, former NCP MP from Satara, Udayanraje Bhosale, is contesting the bypoll as the BJP’s candidate after having defected to the BJP recently. He takes on former Sikkim Governor Shriniwas Patil, the NCP’s candidate and a close aide of Pawar. Known more for his antics than serious work, Bhosale joining the BJP is of symbolic value because of him being a direct descendant of Maratha warrior King Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.

Besides, Bhosale, the BJP roped in another royal, sitting MLA Shivendraraje Bhosale – Udayanraje’s fractious cousin and former rival has resulted in tables being turned on the NCP for the Satara Assembly seat, while undermining Pawar’s hold over Satara.

The most crucial Assembly battle in Satara is unquestionably that in Karad South, where former Chief Minister and senior Congressman Prithviraj Chavan takes on the BJP’s Atul Bhosale along with his old Congress nemesis, Vilas ‘Kaka’ Undalkar, who has fielded his son as an Independent candidate.

In 2014, Chavan had managed to win a hard-fought battle against the very same opponents. In the Kolhapur South Assembly segment, a closely-fought battle is on the cards between the youthful Ruturaj Patil, nephew of Congress leader, Satej ‘Bunty’ Patil, who is challenging the sitting BJP legislator Amal Mahadik.

The Kolhapur electoral battle is yet another chapter in the long-running feud between Satej Patil and his arch rival former NCP MP Dhananjay Mahadik, another recent BJP entrant who is Amal Mahadik’s cousin. Interestingly, the young Ruturaj Patil is being openly supported by Sanjay Mandalik, the newly elected Shiv Sena MP of Kolhapur who is also an avowed adversary of the powerful Mahadik clan and especially Dhananjay Mahadik.

In Pune, the BJP, which presently holds 12 of the district’s 21 Assembly seats, has acquired a major ally in the form of former Congressman Harshawardhan Patil, who went over after a bitter fallout with the NCP over a ticket on the Indapur seat. Patil, determined to regain his lost citadel of Indapur (which is part of the Baramati Lok Sabha constituency), is up against sitting NCP MLA Dattatreya Bharne. A win for Patil would expand the BJP’s footprint in Baramati and increase the worries of the Pawar clan.

The two most eagerly fought contest in Pune are arguably Kothrud, where BJP State chief Chandrakant Patil is stepping into the Assembly arena for the first time, and Baramati, where senior NCP leader Ajit Pawar is seeking re-election for the seventh straight time. Patil, who initially faced the hostility of local Brahmin outfits, dissension within party ranks and the ire of citizens for being an ‘outsider’ from Kolhapur, faces the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena’s Kishore Shinde, who is being covertly backed by the NCP. In Baramati, Ajit Pawar is up against influential Dhangar leader Gopichand Padalkar, whom the BJP ‘imported’ from Sangli with an eye on the formidable Dhangar votes in Baramati.

While the Congress’ virtually leaderless and incoherent campaign has hit its candidates hard, it hopes to offset the ‘leadership crisis’ by its fielding of experienced campaigners like Arvind Shinde (Kasba Peth Assembly seat) and Ramesh Bagwe (Pune Cantonment seat) who have a sound understanding of Pune’s civic woes. However, in the urban pockets of Pune, a strong current of discord is evident with citizens fed-up of ruling party MLAs as well as opposition party leaders for having failed to resolve problems of potable water and poor infrastructure despite tall claims over several years.

In several places in the Chinchwad Assembly segment, citizens have decided not to cast their votes until their drinking water problems have been sorted out. A similar situation prevails in the Hadapsar segment, where scores of residents from housing societies have barred the sitting BJP MLA Yogesh Tilekar for entering their areas to seek votes. In some societies in Kondhwa (part of the Hadapsar segment), residents have been forced to seek recourse to tankers for the past 15 years despite dams overflowing with water.