If there is one district in Maharashtra that has scripted the fall and resurgence of Congress in the last five years, it would be Kolhapur. The grand old party, which had failed to win even one of the 10 Assembly seats in the district in the 2014 polls, managed to win four seats this time. The Shiv Sena suffered the greatest setback as all six party MLAs failed to defend their seats in the district. Politics in Kolhapur revolves around the sugar mills and Gokul, the cooperative milk dairy of the region. Most of the sugar barons were earlier aligned with the Congress but later shifted their loyalty to the NCP. Just before the state elections this year, Kolhapur district Congress president Prakash Awade decided to quit in protest against the infighting in the party. Awade, a former minister and son of veteran Congress leader Kallappa Awade, fought the elections as an independent from the Ichalkaranji seat and defeated BJP MLA Suresh Halwankar. A divided Congress had given former minister Satej Patil the charge of the district. Patil, a sitting MLC, decided to refrain from contesting himself and instead fielded his nephew, Ruturaj, from his home constituency of Kolhapur south. Ruturaj was pitted against BJP MLA Amal Mahadik whose brother Dhananjay Mahadik, a former NCP MP, had defected to BJP after losing in the Lok Sabha polls to Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Mundlik. In Kolhapur, however, personal equations and rivalries seem to take precedence over party norms, and Mundlik was seen openly campaigning for Ruturaj. Patil, who has had a feud with Mahadik, had earlier defied Congress-NCP ties and helped Mundlik win the Lok Sabha polls. The Shiv Sena MP had helped Patil against Mahadik. Satej Patil claimed that the Kolhapur results were an indication that the middle-class had deserted the BJP-Sena alliance. “The tardy rehabilitation process (of flood-affected people) and mishandling of the economy has turned the middle class against BJP,” he said. Hatkanangale Shiv Sena MP Dhairyasheel Mane, however, blamed BJP rebels for the party’s performance in the district. “Barring the two seats the BJP was contesting from, party leaders had rebelled against Shiv Sena candidates and stood against the official candidate in all the seats under the banner of Jan Surajya Samiti. That affected our poll prospects,” he said. Mane said the matter has been brought to the notice of party leaders. The Samiti, headed by former minister Vinay Kore, was once part of the NDA but had left the alliance right before the elections.
