Satara, Oct. 13: In western Maharashtra’s sugar belt, the BJP is striving to build a base from scratch through defections while the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) are slogging to retain their turfs.
With 58 of Maharashtra’s 288 Assembly seats, the state’s western zone, stretching from Pune to Sangli, has been the pivot of the state’s politics. Key to politics here is a nexus between the sugar cooperatives and the sugar industry’s auxiliaries and their beneficiaries.
Western Maharashtra produced the state’s first chief minister, the legendary Yashwantrao Chavan who hailed from Karad, also the home of the last chief minister, Prithviraj Chavan. Other political luminaries from the region include Vasantdada Patil and Sharad Pawar.
Satara has a place in Congress history: along with Midnapore and Ballia (Uttar Pradesh), it contributed the highest number of freedom fighters.
Those like Patang Rao Phalke and D.K. Shinde, now in their 90s, dutifully visit the decrepit Congress office every day. They have received nothing from the party, nor do they expect anything, they said.
“We don’t own sugar factories,” rued Shinde.
The BJP and the Shiv Sena were out of the vortex of sugar politics. So, the BJP has had to steal defectors from the Congress and the NCP and field them to give itself a fighting chance in western Maharashtra.
Atul “Baba” Bhonsale, a 31-year-old doctor, is taking on Prithviraj Chavan in Karad. Atul’s grandfather was cooperatives minister in a Congress government led by Vasantdada Patil.
His father, also a Congress member, owns a sugar cooperative — a must for anyone looking to be taken seriously in politics here.
“Prithviraj ditched Atul Baba after promising him a ticket,” alleged Basheer Inamdar, a former sarpanch (village headman) and BJP worker.
In the adjoining constituency of Shirala, the BJP enticed Shivajirao Nayak to become its candidate. Nayak, who won as an Independent in 1995, 1999 and 2004, heads a sugar cooperative and owns a glucose plant.
Like Atul’s, his father and grandfather too were of Congress vintage.
“The Congress refused him a ticket, so he had no choice but to join the BJP. The NCP fielded another former Independent,” said Babaji Nayakodi, a Nayak loyalist in Krishnashedge town.
“The BJP and the RSS are nothing here because they have no role in the cooperatives. We have created a presence for the BJP,” Nayakodi said.
Nayak’s links with BJP leader Nitin Gadkari helped. Like Gadkari, he used to be a minister in the BJP-Sena coalition government.
In the Wai Assembly seat, Madan Bhosale of the Congress is among the favourites.
“He owns a sugar factory, a mineral water plant and a pesticides factory that have given jobs to youths like me,” said Mayur Pawar, a second-year science student from Anavadi village who works part-time in one of Bhosale’s units.
Sripad Dhekane, a BJP official in Pune, said that while the sugar cooperatives have their place in western Maharashtra’s politics, they have a dark underbelly too.
“The sugar lobbies, doubtless, are the backbone of the NCP. But in the past two years, the genuine cooperatives collapsed because the state government heavily patronised the private sugar factory owners, who are proxies of the politicians themselves,” said Dhekane.
“Any cooperative that goes against the government loses its support. In this battle, even the Congress lost out. Many of its cooperatives were driven to bankruptcy by the NCP. When these insolvent cooperatives were put up for bids in the open market, the NCP’s proxies bought them.”
Rajkumar Patil, the NCP’s Satara district general secretary, denied the charge.
“The sugar belt is indebted to Pawar sahib because he raised the maximum statutory price of not only sugar but also other crops like onions and wheat, which too matter in this region,” Patil claimed.
