BJP president Amit Shah on Friday shared the dais with a Sena MP, whose party has turned bitter against the BJP for its perceived failure to spell out the terms on which it would be part of the Maharashtra Government, at a function to mark inauguration of the long-delayed cane-crushing season, giving rise to speculations about possible backchannel negotiation.
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Mr. Shah, on a day-long tour across the State, raised eyebrows when he shared the platform with Chandrakant Khaire, the Sena MP from Aurangabad.
The BJP president in his address on the occasion said, “This is a platform for farmers. Both BJP and Shiv Sena workers have gathered in large numbers with the objective of solving the problems of Maharashtra’s sugarcane farmers. Our friend [Khaire] should not be concerned about attending the event in my company, as this was a farmer’s function.”
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Likewise, Mr. Khaire told reporters that he had merely attended the function to put forth grievances of farmers before the BJP chief while promising that his government would revive the sagging sugar cooperatives of Maharashtra.
Speaking at the Eknath Sugar Co-operative factory in Paithan district, Mr. Shah, who was instrumental in wrenching control of the Congress cooperatives in Gujarat, assured his audience that the National Democratic Government at the Centre stood firmly behind Maharashtra’s sugarcane farmers.
Gross financial mismanagement on part of their promoters, many of whom are influential politicos from Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress party, has bedeviled the 120-odd cooperative sugar factories in the state. As a result, less than ten churn out any profits, leaving a residual sea of resentment among farmers against their owners.
While 60 per cent of these cooperatives, mostly sick, are under the NCP’s control, Mr. Pawar has offered unsolicited and unconditional support to the BJP. The motives presumably are to bail out his scam-tainted confreres, allege leaders heading the sugarcane farmer movement to supplant the NCP’s sugar barons.
“The Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana (SSS) was built on the popular anger of sugarcane farmers who were not paid their dues on time. The Sena’s craven sharing of the dais with the BJP proves that they too want power in the State,” said Raju Shetti, president of the SSS.
Mr. Shetti’s party, the Swabhimani Paksha, a BJP constituent, failed to open its account, conceding its strongholds to the Sena.
The SSS has demanded that the BJP government order cooperative owners to pay Rs. 2700 a tonne as first advance payment for farmers, else it has threatened to spar a Statewide agitation.