Caste arithmetic in favour of BJP candidate Patole

Not many will remember senior NCP leader and then Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel had been extremely unwilling to contest the 2009 lok Sabha polls from the re-constituted Bhandara-Gondiya constituency. So much so that Patel had asked the NCP leadership to nominate his wife Varsha in his place to contest the polls from his home constituency.

Given that Patel’s wife had been moving around the constituency meeting people for the previous two months, most constituents and even the Minister’s confidants had concluded that Varsha Patel would eventually contest the polls.

Having suffered a defeat in the 2004 lok Sabha polls at the hands of BJP’s Shishupal Natthu Patle by a narrow margin of 3,009 votes, Patel — a Rajya Sabha member then —had been contemplating giving a skip to the 2009 lok Sabha polls.

Apart from his poor performance in the 2004 polls, a couple of other reasons for Patel’s reluctance to contest the 2009 were: That the contours of the constituency had vastly changed and some new areas from the adjacent Gondia district had come to be made a part of the re-constituted Bhandara-Gondiya constituency owing to the  delimitation exercise and he had been apprehending that an ex-local Congress leader Nana Patole, who is contesting as an Independent candidate, might corner a huge chunk of OBC votes in the constituency.

However, it was the party founder-president Sharad Pawar who brought Patel around at the last moment and made him re-contest the lok Sabha polls, saying that the latter’s failure to contest the polls would send a wrong message to the people in the State and across the country. No wonder that the NCP leadership announced Patel’s candidature from his re-constituted home constituency of Bhandara-Gondiya, just three days before the close of nominations for the 2009 polls.

Fears of a defeat nursed by Patel notwithstanding, the voters of Bhandara-Gondiya sprang a pleasant surprise on Patel in the 2009 polls, by catapulting him to lok Sabha by a huge victory margin of 2,52,015 votes. Patel polled a staggering 4,89,814 votes as against 2,37,899 votes secured by his nearest rival and  Independent nominee Nanabhau Patole. BJP’s sitting MP Shishupal Patle emerged third in the polls, by securing 158,938 votes.

But, much to Patel’s discomfort, electoral arithmetic has changed dramatically on ground between 2009 and 2014. This time around, the BJP has brought Patole, an influential Kunbi leader who came second in the 2009 polls despite being an Independent in the 2009 polls, into its fold and fielded him as its candidate in the polls, while party’s Patole— a powerful Jowar community leader — has thrown his full weight behind the party’s official candidate.

With Patole (Kunbi) and Patle ( Jowar) on its side, the BJP now enjoys the support of a cocktail of three powerful castes — Kunbis, Powars and Telis (lBT) — which collectively account for 4.5 lakh votes in a total electorate of 16.5 lakh. Besides, the BJP has traditional vote base in the communities of lodhis and Kolis.

“With Patole and I having come under one umbrella, both Jowar and kunbi communities are fully behind the BJP. This is for the first time that the caste combination is working in our favour. Patel faces very severe anti-incumbency this time around. The BJP candidate’s victory looks a foregone conclusion. Unless of course there is no EVM malfunction,” Patle told The Pioneer, as he referred to reports about some EVMs being used for the Bhandara-Gondiya constituency being found “faulty”.

(A trial by the poll authorities early this week showed that in one EVM, votes registered in favour of BSP were going to NCP’s Praful Patel, while in 20 others EVMs were not registering votes in favour if the parties for they were being cast)

Knowing full well that he has tough job on hand in this election, Patel is campaigning more intensely than ever before, making visits to village after village with wife Varsha and two children in tow. On the electoral arithmetic side, the Patel camp is banking on the sizable Dalit vote bank and Muslim community that accounts for nearly 60,000 votes in the constituency.

On the campaigning front, Patel talks about the development works he has done for the constituency — apart from setting up the Rajiv Gandhi Flying Academy, he says that he played a crucial part in the Congress-led DF Government announcing a Rs 1,200 crore package for families affected by the Gosikhurd dam, Maharashtra’s largest irrigation project in Bhandara district, that he brought BHEl’s Rs 500 crore power equipment fabrication plant to Bhandara and that he was instrumental in Adani group setting up Rs 3,300 crore MW thermal plant at Tiroda in Gondiya constituency.

The Patel camp is circulating a booklet ‘vikaasnama’ listing his achievements, among voters in the constituency. Interestingly enough, it carries a photograph of Patel of the NCP having a conversation with the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, at a function.

Brought out by Gondia-based Citizen Sports Society on the occasion of Patel’s 58th birthday on February 17,2014,  the ‘vikasnama’ (story of development) carries articles on him and contains photographs of him with political leaders and industrialists.

Upset with Patel’s purported effort to encash Modi’s popularity to woo voters in a constituency where there is already an official party candidate, Maharashtra BJP’s election management chief Shrikant P Bharatiya has lodged a complaint against Patel with State Election Commission for an alleged election malpractice.

In his complaint, Bharatiya has alleged that Patel is “trying to pretend to voters” that there was alliance between the NCO and BJP, “thereby luring voters and misguiding them to vote” for him as if he was associated with the BJP or its Prime Ministerial candidate”. He has charged with Patel trying to cause “undue influence” on voters and thereby indulging corrupt practice as defined under section 123 of the Representation of the People’s Representation Act, 1951 read with provision 1(4) of the Model Code of Conduct.

Through his campaign, BJP nominee Patole rubbishes Patel’s development claims, saying that they had not done any good to the people in the Bhandara-Gondiya constituency.

Patole spits venom when he speaks of the adverse impact of the Adani power plant. According him, the Adani has taken away land from farmers and is drawing much-needed water from Wainganga dam. “The locals are not being given preference in jobs. The plant is causing both air and water pollution. The first thing I will when I can become an MP is to crusade for Adani power plant’s closure,” Patole says.

While the contest in Bhandara-Gondiya constituency, it remains to be seen as to how a bright and promising US-returned electronic engineer Prashant Mishra whom the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP -- who is among other candidates in the fray -- will fare.  By making all right noises, Mishra made his presence felt in the constituency where the campaign ended on Tuesday.