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NCP candidate gives Maharashtra CM a run for his money

Sandesh Prabhudesai in Malvan, Maharashtra

"I have always been fighting Narayan Rane and his Shiv Sena," says Sandesh Parkar, a young grocer who is also a graduate. Despite being just a sarpanch of Kankavli village panchayat, he is taking on the chief minister of Maharashtra in Malvan.

Sponsored by the Nationalist Congress Party, its president and Maharashtra's former chief minister Sharad Pawar is providing Parkar all help to beat the chief minister of five months.

Coming before the electorate for the third consecutive time -- this time in his new avatar as the chief minister -- Rane realises it won't be a cakewalk this time though the Shiv Sena is claiming he will win by a thumping majority. Here, he has been projected as a future Maharashtra CM.

"He is fooling you. Neither will the Shiv Sena come to power nor he will continue as chief minister," says Professor Gopal Dukhande, the state Janata Dal secretary, to the semi-literate villagers. He has been making inroads even in villages that are Sena strongholds like Pendur, to tell stories of Rane's misrule.

In fact, Pendur itself is a victim of it, alleges Professor Dukhande, an educationist and a member of Bombay University's senate. Replying to a villager's question regarding around 22 acres of village land being acquired for a engineering college in Pendur, he said Rane has described an ITI building in Kankavli as the engineering college and begun admissions on the basis of that when the college itself has not come up.

"But he has brought us lots of developmental schemes," says Sudesh Achrekar, a councillor from Malvan, a tiny and picturesque coastal town. He lists schemes for a polytechnic complex, a theatre, to lay roads, to supply tap water, to provide loans for small mechanised fishing canoes, trawlers etc.

With the Kankavli taluka of the Malvan-Kankavli constituency traditionally divided equally between the Congress and the Sena, Rane appears to be concentrating more on Malvan, the birthplace of his forefathers. While maintaining his hold over most of the 69 villages, he has also managed to win over all the councillors who were against the Sena.

Though the Malvan nagar parishad elected 13 of 17 Congress-sponsored councillors by defeating Sena-sponsored candidates, both the ruling and Opposition groups are today behind Rane.

"He will sweep the polls here," claims Achrekar, who is charge of the Sena's campaign in Malvan.

But Nitin Walke, a young hotelier and the city's Janata Dal secretary, says only the leaders have teamed up with Rane, not the workers. "The city will maintain its anti-Sena tradition even this time," he said.

He claims all the 13 councillors changed their plan to back the NCP at the last minute, probably because the chief minister had threatened to bring to light some deals they were involved in. "They had brought even NCP's posters and banners from Bombay," he says.

The NCP, along with the Janata Dal (Secular) and the Republican Party of India, is also fighting the Sena's network spread across the villages. "We are also fighting his image and money power," says Walke.

But Nandu Sawant, a former Rane crony, says what is more worrying is the muscle power Rane can rely on. Sawant, the Congress candidate, has been making an issue of the Sridhar Naik murder case, in which both Rane and he are the accused.

To make his point, Sawant now moves around with an official armed escort. He claims he was also put behind the bars under false charges when he contested the zilla parishad polls recently. "I lost only by 135 votes," he says.

Parkar, Rane's main rival, however, believes the chief minister could be easily defeated if the Congress hadn't been divided. "I will still defeat him, provided Sawant does not secure too many votes," says the NCP candidate.

Jayanand Mathkar, the election agent for Madhu Dandavate in the Lok Sabha poll, figures Rane is likely to win for the third time, snatching this traditionally Congress seat. But it is also true that the Sena's margin of 21,700 in the last assembly election came down to a mere 8,200 in last year's Lok Sabha poll.

A worried Rane has begun campaigning hard, going from village to village and house to house. As the female voting population exceeds 55 per cent, even Rane's wife is now campaigning here, holding mahila melawas to draw the women over to the Sena's side.

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