Accusing both the ruling Mahayuti and the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalitions of forsaking farmers and Maharashtra’s rural electorate, Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana (SSS) leader and former MP Raju Shetti on April 15 filed his nomination for the Hatkanangale Lok Sabha seat in Kolhapur district.
An influential farmer leader in the State’s ‘sugar heartland’ (Kolhapur, Sangli, Satara districts) who has decided to contest independently, Mr. Shetti, who had won the seat twice in the 2009 and the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, made a dramatic entry before the Collectorate building on a bullock cart to file his nomination for the fourth time, flanked by thousands of farmers.
“I am confident of winning on the strength of common people. Earlier, I had made an announcement on social media that I would be filing my nomination today and requested people to join me if possible…The major political parties had derided my appeal, making it out that I am a lone, isolated candidate. But the overwhelming turnout has exceeded my expectations,” Mr. Shetti said.
The Hatkanangale Lok Sabha seat is poised for a humdinger of a contest, with a three-way confrontation already in place. Mr. Shetti is pitted against incumbent MP Dhairyasheel Mane of the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena. It was Mr. Mane who defeated Mr. Shetti in the 2019 General Election.
The MVA has fielded another candidate in form of Satyajeet Sarudkar of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT). There is a possibility that the contest may develop into a four-way one if Independent MLA from Ichalkarnaji, Prakash Awade, files his nomination on Tuesday.
Projecting himself as the voice of farmers and commoners pitted against wealthy sugar cooperative owners and power-hungry ruling party leaders, Mr. Shetti said, “Farmer suicides have increased twofold in the last five years. Their condition has worsened since the last General Election. Neither the ruling, nor the Opposition, parties are bothered about pressing problems of unemployment, poor agricultural produce, water issues, student loans.”
Mr. Shetti has been relying on crowdfunding to raise his electoral expenses. It was believed that the MVA had been courting the SSS chief to join the Opposition coalition. However, parleys broke down after Uddhav Thackeray decided to field his candidate in Hatkanangale.
“On the one side, there are the owners of these sugar barons, on the other there are these ‘traitors’ [alluding to the Shinde-Sena]…by fielding a candidate from the Sena (UBT), it shows how much love the MVA actually have for farmers. It is clear they use farmers merely for politics,” Mr. Shetti said, stating there was no difference between the two opposing coalitions.
Mr. Shetti first came to political prominence in 2004 as an avowed nemesis of Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar and the ‘sugar lobby’ headed by NCP and Congress politicos in Kolhapur, Satara, Sangli and other districts in the State’s ‘sugar belt’.
After winning the Shirol Assembly seat as an Independent in 2004, Mr. Shetti had trumped the NCP’s MP Nivedita Mane in the 2009 general election, to win the Hatkanangale Lok Sabha seat by a margin of more than 95,000 votes. In 2014, he allied his party with the BJP and was re-elected by an even greater margin of 1.77 lakh votes.
It marked his emergence as an authentic farmers’ voice in Parliament.
However, Mr. Shetti soon turned into a vociferous critic of the Narendra Modi and the Devendra Fadnavis governments at the Centre and the State and quit the NDA in 2017. His antagonism towards the BJP led to Mr. Shetti casting his lot with Sharad Pawar’s NCP – his one-time enemy – ahead of the 2019 Parliamentary election.
But the new alliance proved costly, with Mr. Shetti’s seemingly sure grip on Hatkanangale undercut by the Shiv Sena’s youthful Dhairyasheel Mane (son of Nivedita Mane), who defeated him in what turned out to be one of the biggest upsets in the State during the Lok Sabha election.
Mr. Shetti was perceived as siding with the sugar barons he had once fiercely opposed. To make matters worse, Prakash Ambedkar’s VBA cannibalised Mr. Shetti’s votes, thus indirectly helping the Sena’s candidate.
