Mumbai: In 2019, Maharashtra’s Sangli, a traditional Congress stronghold, was caught in the crosshairs of alliance politics. Eventually, the Congress didn’t contest and the seat slipped away to the rival side.
In 2024 too, the parliamentary seat in the sugar bowl of western Maharashtra saw allies sparring over it, resulting in the Congress giving up its claim on the seat. Like in 2019, the opposition alliance lost the seat. But, there’s a slight twist in the story this time.
The seat has come back to the Opposition, specifically to the Congress, bringing to the fore Vishal Patil, grandson of former Maharashtra chief minister Vasantdada Patil — himself a casualty of coalition politics. A coalition government led by the Congress stalwart was toppled by a rebel group led by Sharad Pawar in 1978.
His grandson Vishal has now helped push the Congress’s double-digit score in the Lok Sabha to triple digits — from 99 to a full century.
Vishal Patil won the Sangli seat by contesting as an independent, rebelling against the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), and emerged victorious with a margin of over a lakh. He has now extended support to the Congress as an associate member of the party.
“I have said this earlier too and will say it again. Congress is in my blood. I am a person of the Congress ideology,” Vishal Patil said, addressing a press conference after his win Tuesday.
On Thursday, Vishal Patil met Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge in Delhi to extend his support to the I.N.D.I.A. bloc and also met party leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.
with INDIA
along with pilot @vishwajeetkadam https://t.co/qDWbYmE6X6— Vishal Prakashbapu Patil (@patilvishalvp) June 6, 2024
The Congress is part of the Opposition, MVA, in Maharashtra along with the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar). The MVA candidate, Shiv Sena (UBT)‘s Chandrahar Patil, came third in Sangli.
The happenings of the Lok Sabha election bring flashes of how this district has always been contentious between alliances and political factions.
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Sangli: Patil family stronghold till 2014
Sangli was always a bastion of the Congress, which won every Lok Sabha election here from 1962 to 2014. But after 1980, it emerged as a stronghold of the Patil family with Vasantdada himself, his wife Shalini Patil, his son Prakashbapu Patil and his grandsons Madan Patil and Pratik Patil, representing the seat. Pratik Patil’s defeat in 2014 against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) marked the end of that streak.
In 2019, members of the Patil family were miffed when the Congress gave away the seat to its ally, Swabhimani Paksha. This irked Pratik Patil whose younger brother Vishal wanted to contest the polls from Sangli. Pratik severed ties with the Congress, saying the party doesn’t need the house of Vasantdada Patil anymore, and decided to focus on the family cooperatives.
Even then, Vishal was rearing to contest as an independent, but eventually ended up contesting from the Swabhimani Paksha and lost to BJP’s Sanjaykaka Patil.
While the Sangli district was always a Vasantdada Patil family stronghold, Vasantdada Patil had a running political feud with Rajarambapu Patil, another senior Congress leader from Sangli district. Rajarambapu is the father of Jayant Patil, a senior MLA from the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar).
“Even after the two senior leaders passed away, the political relations between the two families continued to be choppy,” political commentator Pratap Asbe told ThePrint.
A fraction of this historic rivalry could be seen in how Vishal Patil’s rebellion played out this year.
Fight for Sangli within MVA
There’s a backstory to the Shiv Sena (UBT)’s insistence for Sangli, leaders from both Congress and Shiv Sena (UBT) told ThePrint.
The insistence for Sangli was because the party had lost Kolhapur, another seat in the western Maharashtra region that was held by the undivided Shiv Sena, to the Congress. The sitting MP Sanjay Mandlik had shifted to the Shinde-led Shiv Sena, but Thackeray had demanded all seats from where his party had gotten MPs elected in 2019. The MVA then decided to urge Shahu Chhatrapati, a descendant of Maratha warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji, to enter the electoral fray and contest from Kolhapur.
The idea was that the royal, popularly known as Shahu Maharaj, will have the upper hand over his rival, incumbent MP Mandlik from the Shinde-led Sena, because of his royal Maratha lineage and popularity of his family within the district. Shahu Maharaj beat Mandlik by 1.5 lakh votes.
“It took a lot of effort convincing Shahu Maharaj and his son (former Rajya Sabha MP Sambhajiraje Bhosale) to contest. Eventually we told them, you pick whichever symbol you are comfortable with within the MVA, but contest for us,” a senior Congress leader told ThePrint.
Shahu Maharaj was associated with the undivided Shiv Sena around 1998. He wanted to contest then on a Sena ticket and was also present on stage at a public meeting of Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray but was denied a ticket at the time.
This time, Shahu Maharaj’s choice was the Congress, and the seat went to the party. That is when the Shiv Sena (UBT) shifted its gaze to the neighbouring Sangli.
Sangli & cracks within MVA
The Shiv Sena (UBT) announced its candidate, Chandrahar Patil, from Sangli even before the dispute was publicly settled and the alliance had hammered out a seat-sharing agreement.
Vishal Patil decided to contest as an independent and pulled support from a number of local Congress leaders and functionaries, including Vishwajeet Kadam, MLA from Palus-Kadegaon which falls under Sangli Lok Sabha. Vishwajeet is the son of late Congress leader Patangrao Kadam.
“People of Sangli had this time decided that they want a candidate of the INDIA alliance, of the MVA. People saw me as a candidate espousing the ideology of the INDIA alliance and voted for me in large numbers,” Vishal Patil said at his press conference Tuesday, with Kadam seated next to him.
“An independent candidate getting over 50 percent of the votes is not the work of a single person. All Congress functionaries and cadres unitedly worked for this. The cadre of our allies in MVA also stood behind me with all their power,” he added.
The Congress leadership turned a blind eye to the rebellion against MVA’s Chandrahar Patil, candidate from the Sena (UBT). When Vishal Patil won, it was a moment of vindication for the party’s state leaders, many of whom said in confidence that the party should have never let Sangli go to their ally in the first place.
Thackeray had hinted at his unhappiness over what happened in Sangli while speaking to reporters on the day of results.
“In the case of Sangli, we can see clearly whether alliance dharma was followed or not. We will take our next steps accordingly,” he said.
While the campaigning was still underway, there were whispers that Jayant Patil of the Sharad Pawar-led NCP conspired with Shiv Sena (UBT) to keep Sangli out of Congress hands.
Jayant Patil rebuffed the charge on several occasions. On one such occasion, at a press conference in the district in April, he had said, “Many people have been defaming me on social media in this district. I have been a karyakarta who has always tried to ensure that everyone in MVA comes together… Everybody who is raising this should first introspect, the party to which they belong to, what stand that party has taken,” he said.
“Rajarambapu Patil and Vasantraodada Patil must be having tea together in heaven. They must be saying these people have gone mad… Today instead of raking up old things, today we are going forward,” he added.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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