In a setback to the Prakash Ambedkar-led Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA), former MLA and VBA leader from Akola, Haridas Bhade, held talks with Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar on Sunday.
Mr. Bhade along with another former MLA Baliram Sirskar and 45 VBA office-bearers submitted their resignations to Mr. Ambedkar last month. He attributed their exit to Mr. Ambedkar’s allegedly ‘dictatorial style’ of functioning within the party.
Sharad Pawar
However, sources said Mr. Bhade had been miffed after he was denied a ticket by Mr. Ambedkar in the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly election.
While he was expected to formally enter the NCP fold in Mumbai on Sunday, Mr. Bhade said he would take a final call on his joining Mr. Pawar’s party in a week’s time. “We held fruitful discussions with Mr. Pawar on Sunday. More than 100 VBA office-bearers from across Maharashtra, including some from the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), are keen to join the NCP. However, our condition is that we should be given responsible positions,” Mr. Bhade told The Hindu from Mumbai.
Mr. Bhade, said to be an influential Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh or BBM (the former name of the VBA) leader in Akola, had bagged the Akola East Assembly seat in the 2009 Assembly poll, defeating his nearest rival, the Shiv Sena’s Gulabrao Gawande, by a margin of nearly 14,000 votes. However, he lost his seat in the 2014 election to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Randhir Savarkar by a slender margin of less than 2,000 votes.
Mr. Sirskar, another important leader in the erstwhile BBM, is a former two-time MLA from the Balapur Assembly segment in Akola.
Akola has been a stronghold of Mr. Ambedkar’s party with Mr. Ambedkar himself being elected twice as MP from the Akola Lok Sabha constituency.
“Despite the exit of these former VBA legislators, it remains to be seen just how much damage they can do to Mr. Ambedkar’s party. After all, both Mr. Bhade and Mr. Sirskar were elected because of Mr. Ambedkar’s pull in the region,” a Mumbai-based political analyst said.
The latest exits of VBA leaders is indicative of the friction prevailing within Mr. Ambedkar’s party following the Assembly election last year.
The VBA’s alliance with the Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM had queered the pitch for the Congress and the NCP in at least 10 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats during the 2019 general elections by eating into the traditional Dalit vote bank of the two parties.
However, following the Lok Sabha polls, the VBA-AIMIM alliance was split wide open following bickering over seat sharing before the Assembly election last October.
The AIMIM had alleged that Mr. Ambedkar was only willing to leave a paltry eight of the 288 seats for it to contest, while the VBA would fight on the remaining 280.
Since the crumbling of the alliance, the VBA has emerged as a somewhat disoriented party, having lost the initiative that Mr. Ambedkar had seized following the 2018 Bhima-Koregaon clashes, which led to a significant proportion of the Ambedkarite community gravitating towards the VBA.
