Mumbai: Sharad Pawar’s political strategising has managed to keep the BJP at bay in western Maharashtra, despite the latter having Ajit Pawar on its side.
After the split in the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the BJP was hoping to wrest the key region from the senior Pawar’s grip.
Out of the 10 Lok Sabha seats in western Maharashtra, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) has won five while the Mahayuti won four. Congress leader Vishal Patil, who fought as an Independent, won from Sangli. In the 2019 elections, the BJP and then ally Shiv Sena (undivided) had secured seven seats in the region, while the undivided NCP had won three.
The most crucial seat of Baramati went into Sharad Pawar’s kitty as Supriya Sule defeated Sunetra Pawar, wife of Ajit Pawar, by a margin of over 1.5 lakh votes. Although the contest was between Sule and Sunetra Pawar, the real fight here is perceived as one between Sharad Pawar and his nephew Ajit. The results show that the senior Pawar’s political might prevailed.
Another key seat, Brahmin-dominated Pune which has been a BJP bastion for the past decade, stayed with the party. BJP’s candidate Murlidhar Mohol defeated Ravindra Dhangekar of the Congress by over 1.2 lakh votes.
While last year’s Kasba Peth assembly bypoll loss had caused jitters in the BJP, with Dhangekar wresting the seat that had been with the party for three decades, Mohol’s win has come as a shot in the arm.
Sangli, a contentious seat between MVA allies Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray and Congress), saw an interesting result. The Congress’s Vishal Patil, who was denied a ticket because the Shiv Sena (UBT) fought from the seat, emerged the winner.
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Why western Maharashtra is significant
Western Maharashtra was a Congress-NCP stronghold until 2014, when the BJP started making inroads in the region with the Modi wave, and retained its dominance there in 2019.
Widely known for its sugar belt, western Maharashtra is agriculturally rich and influenced by the politics surrounding the cooperative sector, which includes sugar, dairy, credit societies and even banks. The sugar bowl of the state has also flourished due to industries and educational institutes that support its agricultural sector.
Many of the most prominent Maratha political leaders have come from the region. Five of the 19 chief ministers of the state since its formation in 1960 were from western Maharashtra. Yashwantrao Chavan, the first CM of Maharashtra, was from Karad, Vasantdada Patil was from Sangli, Sharad Pawar from Baramati and Prithviraj Chavan from Karad.
In 2019, while the Congress won zero seats in the region, the NCP won three, while the BJP-Shiv Sena combine won the remaining seven. Though the BJP swept Maharashtra, it still had one Achilles’ heel, western Maharashtra, a key reason why Ajit Pawar was brought into the NDA fold. However, he is facing one of his toughest battles in his hometown, Baramati.
Before the election, the key to an NCP-Congress resurgence was the Solapur-Madha region, where Sharad Pawar brought together two veteran leaders — the NCP’s Vijaysinh Mohite-Patil and Congress’s Sushilkumar Shinde. And it paid off. While Vijaysinh’s nephew Dhairyasheel Mohite-Patil won against BJP’s Ranjit Singh Naik Nimbalkar by over 1.2 lakh votes, Sushilkumar’s three-time MLA daughter Praniti Shinde defeated Ram Satpute of BJP by a margin of over 74,000 votes.
Another star candidate, Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj of the Congress, a 12th-generation descendant of Chhatrapati Shivaji, won against Sanjay Mandlik of Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde) by 1.5 lakh votes in the Kolhapur seat.
The neighbouring constituency of Hatkanangale saw a triangular fight with farmer leader Raju Shetti contesting against Satyajeet Patil of Shiv Sena (UBT) and Dhairyasheel Mane from the Shinde-led Shiv Sena. Mane won by a margin of over 13,400 votes.
In Satara, another Chhatrapati Shivaji descendent, Udayanraje Bhosale from the BJP, won against Shashikant Shinde of NCP (Sharad Pawar) by a margin of 32,000 votes.
Dr Amol Kolhe from NCP (Sharad Pawar) secured a second term from Shirur, winning against Shivaji Adhalrao of NCP (Ajit Pawar) by a margin of 1.4 lakh votes.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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