PUNE, March 9: For Sharad Pawar, the toast of the anti-saffron parties in Maharashtra today, perhaps the sweetest victories were the ones in the sugar belt. The manner in which the Congress overran the sugar belt demolished not just Shiv Sena-BJP claims of having made inroads in the region but also sent out a clear message that the saffron combine could no longer bank on its single policy of encashing rivalry within the Congress.It is this failure of the ruling combine to make political gain of factional fights within the Congress that has become the worrying point for the saffron cadres. For, all along they had blindly pursued this policy.
And now when the Assembly elections are just two years away, the combine will have to think of something else in a region which has traditionally voted the Congress.
The 1996 saffron successes in the sugar belt now seem to be an aberration. The combine had then bagged three seats in the sugar bowl, including the Congress citadel of Kopargaon and the prestigiousseat of Satara. These victories were flaunted by the combine as `major dents' made in western Maharashtra.
But now it all rings hollow. ``The BJP-SS gained last time from the factional fights within the Congress. They tried to play the card again this time. But look where it got them. They have failed miserably,'' observes an independent MLA from western Maharashtra who, incidentally, is supporting the Manohar Joshi government.
The BJP-Sena combine lost two seats -- Solapur and Satara -- in the sugar belt while in neighbouring Ahmednagar district, it swapped a seat with the Congress. Cooperative tycoon Balasaheb Vikhe Patil just about managed a win over the Congress in Ahmednagar but in Kopargaon, Bhim Badade, the BJP member of the 11th Lok Sabha, was made to eat humble pie.
``The Sena-BJP banked too heavily on the pre-election crossing over of the so-called cooperative heavyweights. Another blunder which the combine made at the very beginning was the way it meddled with the panchayat samitis, therebyalienating the independent MLAs who were in control, in western Maharashtra districts,'' says one of the independent MLAs.
The Congress, on the other hand, tried hard to ensure one-to-one contests in the sugar belt. ``Congress prospects received a boost when the Krishna Valley Development Corporation, an alliance endeavour, came under a cloud.
None of our (Sena) leaders, touring the sugar belt, dwelt at length on the good that we had done in the last three years,'' complains a senior Sena man.Attempts by the combine to browbeat the cooperatives, nurtured for years by the Congress, boomeranged. ``The cooperatives were hounded selectively,'' claims Digvijay Khanvilkar, Congress MLA from Kolhapur.
``The State Government went ahead and dismissed the board of directors of the Krishna cooperative in Karad. They made miserable attempts to fracture the Congress support base, netting a few cooperative stalwarts. If you go by the list of politicians who joined the Sena, you will find it was a rejected lot fromthe Congress,'' Khanvilkar maintains.
This is not just a Congress charge. Even a section of BJP-SS cadres admit that the `debatable' actions against the cooperatives did generate an anti-Maratha feeling in the sugar belt. It all adds up, concede those on the losing side.
