Rajendra Shekhawat certainly didn’t intend to faint, but faint he did. Campaigning in Amravati this week with negligible support from his party, the Congress, Shekhawat fainted and fell to the ground while addressing a small rally in a pandal. Shocked senior Congressmen immediately got him medical attention and he was back on the campaign trail the following day. But the partymen on the street were still missing. That’s because hundreds of Congress workers are silently working for Sunil Deshmukh, two-time MLA and minister in the state cabinet, who was denied a ticket in favour of Shekhawat. Deshmukh is now contesting as an independent.
Vilasrao Deshmukh, Union minister and ex-Maharashtra CM, declared that there was “no gharanashahi” in the party, barely a day after he secured a nomination for son Amit. The promotion of young people from political families, he explained, was a way to bring hard-working youngsters into active politics. The list of such ‘hard-working youngsters’ contesting is rather long this time. Some like Narayan Rane are blatant in their intent; he is contesting, elder son Nilesh is currently an MP, and he fought hard for a nomination for younger son Nitesh.
Across the state’s political spectrum, as many as 30 candidates are either second- or third-generation young politicians from well-established political families. In the BJP, Gopinath Munde, MP and party general secretary, managed three nominations for the family—daughter, niece and brother’s son-in-law—prompting many in the state chief Nitin Gadkari’s faction to take digs at him. Single-handedly, they say, Munde has managed to turn the BJP into the ‘Munde Janata Party’. But the man is unfazed. “My daughter Pankaja has worked with me in Parli-Vaijnath for years, she knows the people there and they know her. Why should she not contest?” he asked.
Dynasties, analysts say, are not exclusive to Maharashtra or to any particular party because politics is increasingly treated as a profit-oriented enterprise. And what better way than to keep it all in the family. Seasoned politicians, in fact, nurture more than one youngster in the family, just in case. Sharad Pawar can choose between daughter Supriya Sule and nephew Ajit Pawar. Sushilkumar Shinde can toss up between daughter Praniti and son-in-law Raj Shroff. And, so the story goes.
