A day after the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition froze its seat-sharing deal, resentment among the Congress leadership and cadre over the Sangli and Mumbai South-Central seats being ceded to the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) continued to simmer with local Congress leaders urging the MVA leadership to reconsider its decision on the contentious seats.
Meetings were held in Sangli’s Palus-Kadegaon which were presided by Congressman and MLA Vishwajeet Kadam and Vishal Patil, the grandson of late Congress stalwart and former CM of Maharashtra, Vasantdada Patil, who is the aspirant for the Sangli Lok Sabha seat.
Simultaneously, a meeting was held in Mumbai by Congress leader Varsha Gaikwad, an aspirant for the Mumbai South-Central seat.
The Congress cadre and local leadership is upset that Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) chose to unilaterally declare the names of wrestler Chandrahar Patil and Thackeray confidante Anil Desai for the Sangli and Mumbai South-Central seats respectively even as parleys among the MVA partners were on.
Speaking to reporters in Sangli following a meeting today evening, Mr. Kadam urged the MVA leadership to reconsider its decision on Sangli after studying the political history of the constituency, which has remained a Congress bastion in western Maharashtra for over half-a-century since 1962.
“Given that Sangli has long been a Congress bastion, we had been consistently conveying the feelings of our party workers to our Delhi high command. In state meetings, all our leaders, be it [Maharashtra Congress chief] Nana Patole, senior leaders like Balasaheb Thorat and Prithviraj Chavan agreed that the party ought to get the seat and was capable of fighting it. Feelings at the local level were conveyed to our national leaders like Mallikarjun Kharge, K.C. Venugopal and Ramesh Chennithala,” Mr. Kadam said, who was flanked by Vishal Patil during the press conference.
He stressed that the party had bene preparing for the seat for months and that an awkward situation within the MVA would not have arisen had Uddhav Thackeray not unilaterally announced his list of candidates.
While hinting that the Sena (UBT) had no real ground strength in Sangli, Mr. Kadam observed that the Congress had two MLAs while a third Assembly segment was held by NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) faction leader Suman Patil, wife of the late Maharashtra Home Minister R.R. Patil.
“Furthermore, the Congress is well represented in the local bodies in Sangli as well as in gram panchayats in the district,” Mr. Kadam said.
“We have respect for Uddhav personally. But Sangli’s history must be considered while considering the candidature. Despite the seat-sharing having already been declared, I humbly urge the MVA leadership to kindly reconsider the candidate for the Sangli seat,” Mr. Kadam said while refusing to field any questions about his future course of action.
The ceding of the Sangli seat to the Sena (UBT), which fielded political rookie Chandrahar Patil, has been especially demoralising for the Congress cadre in western Maharashtra, given that Mr. Vishal Patil is the grandson of late CM Vasantdada Patil and that Sangli still has a large body of the Patil family’s followers.
Since 1989 until 2014, members of the Vasantdada Patil clan have been elected to this seat.
Meanwhile, in an important development, Vishal’s elder brother - Pratik Patil, a former Union Minister of State and two-term ex MP of Sangli, met with Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) chief Prakash Ambedkar in Akola today.
Given that the Patil family’s considerable body of supporters have been urging Vishal to contest as an Independent, the meeting with Mr. Ambedkar set rumour mills abuzz whether Vishal Patil was contemplating fighting on a VBA ticket.
“Our family’s relations with Mr. Prakash Ambedkar date back a long time. Today, the situation in Sangli is such that Vasantdada Patil’s family has been challenged. So, I had come here to seek Mr. Ambedkar’s advice,” Mr. Pratik Patil said.
He claimed that the Congress leadership had declared eith months back that Vishal would be the party’s candidate for the Sangli seat.
“Vishal has been preparing for the last eight months for the Lok Sabha contest. What has happened now is extremely inconvenient for all of us. The Congress high command had officially said that Vishal Patil would be the candidate for Sangli. Even the last time [2019], a similar situation had occurred. Does the party have no use for Vasantdada’s family anymore?” Mr. Pratik Patil, who had quit the Congress in a huff in 2019 following troubles over candidature on the Sangli seat, said.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha, the seat was given to Raju Shett’s Swabhimani Paksha. Vishal Patil had contested on the symbol of the Swabhimani Paksha, bit lost to the BJP’s Sanjaykaka Patil.
At the time, the VBA’s candidate – Gopichand Padalkar (now in the BJP) – had upset Mr. Vishal Patil’s chances by fragmenting votes in a three-way contest.
