After Rao, now Meghe’s turn to face the Ramtek nightmare

From Morshi to Ramtek and Umred to Saoner it sprawls around the Nagpur Lok Sabha constituency. It is predominantly rural and takes a herculean effort to cover all the villages even once. Besides, the pockets of influence of various political ideologies are scattered across the constituency. The issues and problems of the farmers change with the diverse crops grown in the region.

It was not for no reason, therefore, that Meghe wanted to try his hand this time at the Wardha Lok Sabha segment. Though held by the BJP now, it is basically a Congress-oriented segment thanks mainly to the left-over influence of Gandhi’s Sewagram Ashram.

Facing the Ramtek electorate once again, Meghe starts out with a disadvantage. His opponents have the opportunity of ridiculing before the electorate his unsuccessful attempt at deserting the constituency. They will also remind the voters of how he `deserted’ the Nagpur constituency in 1996 when BJP’s Banwarilal Purohit appeared to have gained ground on him.

That apart, the hard political equations too do not favour Meghe. Unlike during the last Lok Sabha election, the Zilla Parishad and Panchayat Samitis are now dominated by the Sena-BJP alliance. The recent elections from the local bodies to the State legislative council showed that even the non-BJP Sena members of these bodies did not vote for the Congress.

The Sena candidate this time, sitting Ramtek MLA Ashok Gujar, is much powerful than Prakash Jadhav whom Meghe faced in 1996. Gujar, a Maratha Kunbi, enjoys strong support from the electorate in his own assembly segment. Former legislator Virendra Deshmukh, on a PWP ticket, will also eat away from the Congress votes in the Katol, Kalmeshwar and Morshi segments.

All in all, it is a very tough fight for Meghe to win. His request for a change of constituency was apparently turned down owing to a `policy decision’ taken by the AICC. If this is so, one wonders, how will Vilas Muttemwar, who contested from Chimur last time, switch to the Nagpur constituency now?