The Congress’ stunning revival in Maharashtra, which saw the party win 13 of the 17 Lok Sabha seats it contested on out of a total 48 Lok Sabha seats to emerge as the single-largest in the State, was testament to the spirited leadership of the party’s second-generation leaders who came into their own in the election.
The renaissance is all the more remarkable given that the party’s organisation structure in Maharashtra has been rickety at best and riven by intense factionalism among the top leadership.
Quite apart from the campaigning by the party’s central leadership including Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, the Congress’s win in Maharashtra was spearheaded by several young ‘veterans’ who have managed to carve a niche in districts in western Maharashtra, Marathwada and Vidarbha with their dynamism.
Three-term MLA Praniti Shinde (43), daughter of veteran Congressman and former Union Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, who was fielded as the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA)’s candidate for the Solapur Lok Sabha seat, pulled off an impressive victory by defeating the BJP’s Ram Satpute, another youthful candidate.
Ms. Shinde’s win has resuscitated the Congress’ sagging fortunes in Solapur. The seat was lost twice to the BJP in successive Lok Sabha elections in 2014 and 2019.
In the last election, Sushilkumar Shinde had bit the electoral dust after Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) chief Prakash Ambedkar, then in alliance with Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM, had cannibalised Congress votes, thus indirectly benefiting the BJP candidate.
After Mr. Shinde announced that the 2019 contest would be his last election, his daughter Praniti had been conscientiously laying the ground following her father’s defeat.
Her win is all the creditable given that of the six Assembly segments comprising the Solapur Lok Sabha seat, only one – Ms. Shinde’s own segment of Solapur City Central – was held by the Congress (MVA) with the rest held by the BJP and its Mahayuti partners. Furthermore, PM Modi had made multiple visits to Solapur before and during the campaigning. In the Marathwada region, the Congress snared all three seats it had contested on.
Effective campaigning by the Deshmukh brothers — Amit and Dhiraj — saw the Congress win the Latur Lok Sabha seat after 15 years.
Maharashtra Election Results 2024 highlights: NDA takes a hit, MVA gains in Maharashtra
Sons of late Maharashtra CM Vilasrao Deshmukh, 48-year-old Amit Deshmukh, supported by his younger brother Dhiraj (44), conducted a spirited campaign to engineer a surprise victory of the Congress’ (MVA’s) candidate for Latur, Dr. Shivajirao Kalge – an unassuming ophthalmologist and political neophyte.
Likewise, in western Maharashtra, it was former Minister Satej ‘Bunty’ Patil’s leadership in the sugar-belt district of Kolhapur that ensured the victory of the MVA’s candidate - Maratha royal Shahu Maharaj Chhatrapati.
Mr. Patil, the son of noted educationist and politico D.Y. Patil and the current Guardian Minister of Kolhapur, had successfully combated the BJP-Shiv Sena’s combined onslaught at the time of the 2019 Assembly election as well, engineering a number of Congress candidates to victory in the sugar belt.
His skilful campaigning had taken maximum advantage of the fractiousness between the Shinde Sena and the BJP in this belt by successfully propagated the Congress as an alternative to the current Mahayuti government’s ‘failures’ in the region.
According to analysts, the Maharashtra Congress has been bedevilled by a leadership crisis since 2016 when Ashok Chavan was State Congress chief. The party’s disastrous performance in the 2019 general election had led Mr. Chavan to resign his post. Likewise, Balasaheb Thorat, who succeeded Mr. Chavan, proved to be an ineffectual party-builder.
The factionalism and infighting continued even after Nana Patole, who succeeded Mr. Thorat, took charge as MPCC chief, with several leaders within the party opposed to Mr. Patole’s style of leadership.
“It is notable that the younger Congress leaders have risen above this bickering and their party’s organisational woes to prove their mettle in this election,” said a Mumbai-based analyst.
In many ways, the Congress’ revival, headed by its younger leaders often working on the ground independently of the senior leadership, has been a continuation of the party’s spirited showing in the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly election, when the party belied predictions to win 44 seats despite lacklustre campaigning by its central leadership and bickering among its top state leaders. At that time, too, the reins of campaigning were firmly taken by the younger leaders.
In Sangli, where rebel Congress candidate Vishal Patil – scion of the family of ex-CM Vasantdada Patil - contested and won as an Independent, the victory bore the seal of 44-year-old Vishwajeet Kadam, the MLA of Palus-Kadegaon.
The seat had proved a source of much rancour within the MVA allies after Uddhav Thackeray’s Sena (UBT) unilaterally declared a candidate despite Sangli having been a Congress bastion for the last half-century.
The local leadership, particularly Vishwajeet Kadam, had been especially aggrieved given that Mr. Kadam had been laying the groundwork for a Congress win at least eight months prior to the poll.
Mr. Kadam had strained every sinew to get Vishal Patil elected; both had received a rude shock following Mr. Thackeray’s announcement and the Congress high command’s decision to give Sangli to the Sena (UBT) in the interests of maintaining amity within the MVA. However, Mr. Patil’s win was testament to Mr. Kadam’s robust preparation.
Published - June 05, 2024 09:57 pm IST
