Ending the impasse over the crucial Sangli Lok Sabha constituency, Swabhimani Paksha chief and MP Raju Shetti on Thursday said the seat would remain with his party as promised by the Congress and the candidate would be announced soon.
However, sources said the Paksha is willing, even now, to back a candidate from the house of former Maharashtra Chief Minister Vasantdada Patil. “We had not desired the Sangli seat in the first place. We had made offers to members of the Vasantdada Patil family to contest on our symbol, but were turned down …even now, we are hopeful they will come round,” said a senior Swabhimani Paksha leader, requesting anonymity.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Shetti, in a massive show of strength, filed his nomination papers for the Hatkanangale Lok Sabha seat in Kolhapur accompanied by workers of the Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana (the parent body of Swabhimani Paksha).
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Mr. Shetti, who took out a rally from Kolhapur’s Dasara Chowk to the Distirct Collector’s office, travelled in a bullock cart and was flanked by academic and Swaraj India president Yogendra Yadav, and top regional leaders of the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) alliance including NCP’s State unit president Jayant Patil, Dhananjay Mahadik MP, and Congress leader Satej ‘Bunty’ Patil.
“I will not rest till I have defeated the BJP, whose government has been apathetic towards the plight of farmers…I am confident of victory,” said the two-time MP from Hatkanangale. He who won in 2009 and 2014 by huge margins.
In 2014, Mr. Shetti was an ally of the BJP, but pulled out of the NDA in 2017. Since then, he has kept himself politically relevant through frequent agitations seeking better prices for dairy and sugarcane farmers.
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His main rival in Hatkanangale, Dhairyasheel Mane (Shiv Sena) will be filing his nomination papers on Friday.
Mr. Mane will be accompanied by Minister for agriculture, horticulture and marketing Sadabhau Khot — Mr. Shetti’s bitter rival who was once his close aide in the Swabhimani Paksha.
The Sangli seat became the cause of ill-will between regional Congress leaders and Mr. Shetti’s party after the ceding of the seat to the latter had incensed former Union Minister of State and ex-MP Pratik Patil, grandson of Vasantdada Patil, who announced his ‘exit’ from the Congress.
However, in the past few days, both senior Congress leaders and Mr. Shetti have made attempts to soothe the frayed egos of the house of Vasantdada Patil, with Pratik even joining in Mr. Shetti’s first campaign rally.
Mr. Shetti has said that his party had made an offer to Pratik, and his brother Vishal, to contest from Sangli but they refused.
The Swabhimani Paksha chief has made it clear that his party was not desirous of the seat at the cost of sparking an internal rift within the Congress or creating ill-feeling among late Vasantdada Patil’s family members.