BJP’s top guns pull out all stops to take on Ajit Pawar in Baramati

Shiv Kumar
Tribune News Service
Mumbai, October 18

While Ajit Pawar looks confident of retaining the Baramati pocketborough for the seventh time in the upcoming Maharashtra elections, the BJP is making a determined effort to wrest the seat from him.

The Pawars have virtually left the campaigning in Baramati to their lieutenants in order to concentrate on other parts of Maharashtra.

“The government has insulted Marathas, insulted the people of Baramati by filing corruption cases against Sharad Pawar,” Ajit said at rally shortly after filing his nomination.

According to sources, Pawar’s emotional speech reduced several veterans in the constituency to tears.

On the other hand, the BJP is sniffing discontent among large sections of the voters in Baramati. The party has fielded Gopichand Padalkar, a leader from the Dhangar community which accounts for 25 per cent of Baramati’s population and numerically only below the Marathas.

Padalkar was among the leaders who lead the agitation for reservations for the Dhangar community and is said to enjoy good support among them.

BJP leaders say they have broken the Maratha vote-bank after the implementation of 16 per cent reservation in educational institutions and government jobs for the community.

“The BJP is getting good support from the Maratha community and we are confident of an upset in Baramati,” says Water Resoures Minister Girish Mahajan who is overseeing Padalkar’s campaign.

Padalkar himself hits the campaign trail with promises of reservation for the Dhangar community.

“His campaign is mainly targetted at the Dhangar community and he is banking on the the BJP leaders to swing votes for him,” says a Nationalist Congress Party leader from Baramati.

On their part, the NCP campaigners have painted Padalkar as an ‘outsider’ without any connect to the people of Baramati.

Sources in the BJP say they have turned the contest in Baramati, Indapur and Daund which are part of the Baramati Lok Sabha constituency into prestige battles.

The party has fielded former Congress leader Harshvardhan Jadhav from Indapur whose campaign is being overseen by Chief Minister Fadnavis himself. In Daund, the BJP got sitting MLA Rahul Kul of the Rashtriya Samaj Paksh to contest under the lotus symbol though both parties are in alliance in the state.