Maharashtra polls: BJP to take on NCP bastion Baramati through neighbouring Indapur

After taking the battle right to the Pawar family’s ‘pocket borough’ during the recent Lok Sabha polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seems to have changed its tack for Baramati in the Assembly elections. A direct attack on the five-decade-old Pawar bastion seems off the cards. Instead, ensuring the victory of Pawar detractors (cue Harshavardhan Patil), contesting from neighbouring Indapur on the BJP ticket, seems to be the game plan.

In Baramati, the BJP has fielded Gopichand Padalkar, a Dhangar community leader, against Ajit Pawar, the former deputy chief minister, has served as a member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) from this constituency for six terms. The BJP’s decision to ‘import’ a leader like Padalkar into Baramati seems more of a compulsion rather than shrewd political strategy. It seems to take inspiration from the Smriti Irani ‘import’ into Amethi during the Lok Sabha polls, to defeat Rahul Gandhi. BJP fielded Irani, an outsider, and presented her as a solution to decades of neglect.

In Baramati, Padaklar’s entry lies in his caste and the BJP’s inability to groom a strong local leader. With Dhangars accounting for 25% of the entire region, the BJP wants to benefit from Padalkar’s candidature in Indapur, where Patil is locked in a fierce battle against NCP’s Datta Bharne, another Dhangar leader. Patil recently defected to the BJP after realising Ajit may not give the Indapur seat to the Congress, the party he represented at the time.

For Ajit, it is not simply about winning from Baramati, but the margin by which that is achieved. “After his recent resignation episode, Ajit’s popularity has gone up,” said Amit Rajwanshi, a local journalist. Ajit had submitted his resignation as the Baramati MLA, citing a case by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) against his uncle and NCP chief, Sharad Pawar. “I don’t want to sound overconfident, but I can give it in writing that my winning margin this time will be over one lakh votes,” said Ajit, at a recent press conference.

Confident about victory, Ajit, like his uncle, has not yet returned to Baramati after filing his nomination papers. He is instead campaigning for other candidates across the state. At home, Ajit’s wife Sunetra is in charge of his campaign. “Be it Ajit Pawar or senior Saheb [Sharad Pawar], they come here only a day before polling. This is because they have been working relentlessly for the development of Baramati and people here understand this,” said Sunetra.

Despite being drought-prone, Baramati, for many, is a shining example of development, with a rich network of co-operatives and sugar, automobile and dairy industries. The Pawar bastion also boasts a chain of educational institutes.

During the recent Lok Sabha polls, BJP took on Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule, with party president Amit Shah personally campaigning against her. However, Sule defeated BJP’s Kanchan Kool by 1.5 lakh votes. In the 2014 Assembly polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally held a rally in Baramati against Ajit Pawar, to no avail.

This time, BJP feels that instead of focusing on Baramati, if it can ensure the victory of people like Harshavardhan Patil, for whom chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has now personally campaigned, it might be beneficial in the long run. BJP’s Padalkar, of course, does not agree with this. “I am reaching out to each and every voter and can feel that people are fed up of the Pawars. It’s for the same reason BJP has given me the ticket from this seat – to upset their calculations,” he said.

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