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A Bitter Battle Ahead

Rebels may upset the Congress applecart in its traditional stronghold - the sugar belt

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A Bitter Battle Ahead
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IN the small village of Bhevari in Baramati, a group of about 50 people gather under the thatched roof of a teashop, as Lok Sabha candidate Shankarrao Bajirao Patil holds forth on the battle between "sathya ani asathya"—truth and untruth.

Patil, a former Congress MP from Bara-mati, is contesting as an independent. Introducing him to the villagers, a local supporter announces over the mike that he is backed by a strong and unusual political configuration of the BJP, Shiv Sena and Janata Dal. The man he is trying to defeat does not need an introduction—Sharad Pawar, who once even won this seat on a Congress(S) ticket when all else fell to the Congress in the sympathy wave post-Indira Gandhi's assassination. Admits a senior BJP leader: "No one expects Patil to win this seat, only a miracle can do that. What we hope to achieve is cut Pawar's margin."

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 Baramati, which Pawar has left for the tail-end of his state-wide campaign, is among 12 seats in western Maharashtra. Dominated by Marathas, it is known as Maharashtra's sugar belt—a region often described as the state's seat of power, the bastion that kept the Congress entrenched in office till last year. It is also Pawar's fertile ground where he organised networks of sugar cooperatives, turning them into levers of control.

If there is one thing that has remained unchanged in Maharashtra since the days of Indira Gandhi, it is the Congress tally of seats in Parliament from the state's western region—in the 1980, 1984, 1989 and 1991 polls, the Congress won 11 of the 12 seats. The one remaining seat went, as if by rotation, to the various warring rivals and splinters: Congress(U) in 1980, Congress(S) in 1984, Janata Dal in 1989 and BJP in 1991.

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The picture is changing slightly. The Shiv Sena-BJP government, the first non-Congress one in Maharashtra barring the small interregnum of a Congress(S)-led coalition two decades ago, lost no time in targeting the Congress roots in western Maharashtra. In that sense, the 1996 elections will test Congress strength in this region like never before. Future political equations also depend on how far the Congress will be able to hold on to the region this time around.

One of the Sena-BJP 'strategies' is to sup-port Congress rebels. The theory is to let the Congress fight the Congress and carve a path for the Sena-BJP, an experiment that may seem to hold at one level but also indicates the helplessness of the ruling coalition against the total command of the Congress in western Maharashtra.

This is one reason why no Opposition party has put up a fight against Pawar, four times chief minister, except for Patil who claims to be the consensus candidate. "I am here, because all the Opposition parties requested me to contest. The Janata Dal withdrew its candidate, so did the Congress (Tiwari). To those who think he cannot be defeated I would like to say that in politics the situation never remains static," says Patil who won the Baramati seat in 1989 with Pawar's support.

Patil, founder-chairman of the Indapur Shetkari Sakhar Kharkhana, left the Congress in 1995, accusing Pawar and other leaders of treating him badly. Patil's inspiration is his dislike for his opponent: "The sugar barons are turning against the Congress. This is mainly because of the behaviour of Pawar. He never speaks the truth. Never keeps his word. Self-interest is his guiding principle."

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Of late, sugar barons have started swelling the ranks of Congress rebels in more noticeable numbers. In the 1995 assembly polls, rebels contested in 200 of the 288 constituencies—nearly 40 of the independents elected are Congress rebels. In western Maharashtra, their presence pushed the Congress down to 35 of a total of 75 seats, with 22 rebels winning their seats. This was unlike the 1990 assembly elections when the region contributed 54 to the Congress tally, helping it stay in power.

This time rebels continue to swell the fray. In Sangli, once a Congress bastion and home base of the late chief minister Vasantrao Patil, the Congress managed to win only one seat in the last assembly polls. Now the official nominee is Madan Patil, whose rebellion in the assembly polls lost the Congress a seat here. He faces Maruti Mane, a former Rajya Sabha member and wrestler, who is a Sena-BJP-supported Congress rebel. In Karad, Prithviraj Chavan is battling Jayawantrao Bhonsle, a Sena-BJP-backed sugar baron. At Ichalkaranji, a seat held by the late Balasaheb Mane since 1977, the official Congress nominee Kalappa Awade, faces a tough challenge from a Congress rebel, Mane's daughter-in-law Nivedita. The saffron alliance is backing a sugar baron, Ganpatrao Sarnaubat, who is contesting as an independent.

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Ahmednagar with 14 sugar cooperatives, the highest in the state, has witnessed ripples of discontent too. "This place and the rest of western Maharashtra are going to be no cake-walk for the Congress, the party has to work hard," says sugar baron Balasaheb Vikhe Patil, whose father set up the first sugar cooperative in the early '50s. In the 1991 Lok Sabha poll, Vikhe Patil contested the Ahmednagar South seat as an independent when he was denied the ticket from Kopargaon (earlier known as Ahmednagar North), a constituency he had represented in Parliament since 1971. He challenged the election of sugar baron Yashwantrao Gadakh and the court set it aside—the seat was subsequently won by the Congress' Dada Shelke Patil. The last assembly polls saw the Congress in a shaky position when it managed to win only three of the six seats. The party is banking on the popularity of its sitting MP to keep out the challenge from the Sena's flam-boyant industrialist candidate Parvez Damania. "This is a fight between rich and poor, between a businessman and an ordinary man. Our MP is one of us," says a Patil supporter, Shaikh Qayyum, pointing to the ragged bunch of Congress workers who step forward to drive home the point.

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Ahmednagar, Kolhapur and other constituencies in the region account for a majority of the 155 registered sugar factories in Maharashtra which produce 32 per cent of the country's sugar. With a series of measures, the Sena-BJP government has tried breaking the power structure in the sugar cooperatives. Measures that include placing a number of factories under administrators, and reviewing the membership rolls of the cooperatives. A drive against 'bogus members' listed 91,000, but a high court ruling has slowed down action.

But Sena-BJP efforts have still not broken the core strength of the Congress. Only the heads of financially weak sugar cooperatives have switched sides, as in places like Ichalkaranji and Karad. The Congress is also hitting back at the Sena-BJP government, highlighting the problems it has brought to the farmer. The government's "mismanagement of cotton and sugarcane crop" have become the high point of Pawar's campaign. "Stocks have piled up bringing heavy losses. The problems of the cotton farmer will bring a negative vote for the Sena-BJP," says a textile engineer from Solapur.

On a different track, the Congress' flam-boyant Union Railway Minister Suresh Kalmadi doesn't need to ponder over these problems in Maharashtra's cultural capital, Pune. Soon after he took over the railways portfolio in September 1995, more than half the nearly 90 projects he took up have been in Maharashtra. As many as eight are at home base, Pune, which includes introducing the Shatabdi Express between Pune and Bombay. This apart from a series of mega ventures from the Ganesh festivals to a sports city. But Pune, a Brahmin bastion, will not be a walkover for Kalmadi. The BJP has pitted local MLA Girish Bapat against him, and opponents are harping on his non-Maharashtrian background. Quips Kalmadi: "Pune always pats a person who has done something. I have done everything for Pune and nothing for Mangalore where I am originally from. So let the voters decide whether I am a Puneite."

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